 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday night. Appreciate you all joining me. We are monitoring the situation in Ukraine from the perspective of individualism, freedom, liberty, watching the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians and updating you on it as it occurs. All right. Thanks for joining me. And thanks. We've had large numbers of people watching the show in the last few days, I think because of the analysis of Ukraine situation, which has been relatively, I think, relatively original. Relatively original sounds weird. But anyway, I think you get the point. All right. So today, we're going to talk more about Ukraine, about what's going on, about the fog of war, about what we know or we don't know. We're going to talk about who's winning, who's losing. That's good. We're going to talk about natural gas. We'll talk about oil. We'll talk about all kinds of stuff, sanctions. And then we'll talk about NATO. So we'll talk about whether NATO was a good idea, a bad idea. Just to remind everybody, funding for the show, we use Super Chat as one of the main ways to fund the show. Thank you. Laurie has already got us rolling with the $50 contribution. Thank you, Laurie. We really appreciate that. But you can ask questions. You don't just have to support the show. You can ask questions in the Super Chat. And we have a goal, $600, which is a goal for every time, for every show. Hopefully, we can exceed that, given that I expect that we'll have a larger than usual audience today. Also, you can subscribe. You should like the show. If you like it, of course, don't like it if you don't like it. But like the show. And as a new thing, you can now become a member of the Iran Book Show on YouTube. There'll be all kinds of unique videos, special videos, and so on. So press the membership button. You can join. Right now, there's only one membership level, with there's, I think, $5.99. So let's get everybody who subscribes to become a member. That would be fantastic. If we can get everybody who subscribes to become a member, everybody who listens to the show to become a member. I think there are all kinds of pokes. And we'll add and we'll have exclusive videos. And we'll do all kinds of things from this. And that'll be great. It'll be great. So yes, subscribe. Cobb says, why are you so weak, Iran? Learn from Putin and Trump. Yeah, muscles. Yeah, let me just say it right now. I'll get into more detail in a minute. But Ukraine might lose this war. But I can guarantee you one thing. Russia has lost. Russia has lost. Putin has lost. This is an unmitigated disaster for Russia. And we'll get into that later. Although, Ukraine could lose as well. As I told you already, wars are lose, lose, lose. So it's likely both parties was lose. But the bigger loser here by far is Putin and the Russians. And we'll get into why I think that in a few minutes. Oh, but first, before we get into all that, I want to start with the spirit of America. And what makes American Americanism so unique and special? And why people all over the world look to us, look to America as a model? And I don't think today, and this is weird for me to say this, but I think this is true if you get what I'm saying properly, right, the spirit of America. I don't think anybody today represents the spirit of America out there in the public as a public figure. Right now, in the last, I don't know, a couple of years, that anybody represents the spirit of America more right now than Elon Musk. Elon Musk is, even though he's not American originally from South Africa, represents the quintessential American spirit. And you get it in this Twitter exchange. And this is just, it makes, it makes, it's inspiring. This is inspiring. This is from the, I don't know, the minister of the interior of Ukraine tweets this 11 hours ago. See, 11 hours ago, Mikhail Fedorov, which is minister of something in Ukraine, tweets, Elon Musk, while you try to colonize Mars, Russia try to occupy Ukraine. While your rockets successfully land from space, Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people. We ask you to provide Ukraine with starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand. I guess to ask, I'm not sure what that means, maybe to ask the Russians to stand up to Putin. But we ask you provide Ukraine's starlink stations. 10 hours later, Elon Musk tweets, Starlink service is now active in Ukraine, more terminals en route. That is all you have to know right now, for now, about Elon Musk, right? He gets shit done. And he gets it done super fast. And he gets it done for the right cause. And he doesn't have to ask permission from anybody. He didn't have to get authorization yet in the United States or America from anybody. He just got it done. You want starlink? Sure, you're the good guys. We'll get you starlink. I love it. I don't know. It's stuff like that about Elon Musk just makes you, makes you love this country and makes you love that spirit and makes you love that can-do attitude and that I, you know, I'm, yeah, I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna go to Mars. I'm gonna get rockets up in the air and reuse them. I'm gonna fail. I don't care about failing. And hey, there's a country in need that asks for starlink. Yeah, 10 hours later, they got it, no problem. We're on this. So I think that's pretty cool. Hopefully you do too. That is American spirit. That's the can-do attitude of American spirit. That's the, we can do anything. It's an American spirit, right? Oh, for those of you who don't know, starlink. Starlink satellites that provide basic incident connection. So you don't need, you don't need Wi-Fi. You don't need cables. You just connect to the starlink satellites. I don't know how it works exactly in the sense of I don't know what you need. Maybe there's an app. I really don't know. But there is a way, you know, you just get it from the satellite. So while Russia is knocking out internet service to the Ukrainians, hacking their service, trying to shut it down, although the hacking has been pretty pathetic, but hacking in, shutting down internet service providers, maybe destroying the cell towers in Ukraine, they're not gonna get alone musk satellites. And therefore the Ukrainians will have satellite connection no matter what, because of a lone musk. So that's what starlink is. Starlink is the network of satellite in the sky and musk company, SpaceX has been putting up tens of thousands of these satellites up in the air. This, I mean, I think the satellites up in the air is gonna be a game changer long-term for authoritarians. It's gonna, it's, you know, the Chinese won't have control over people's internet if those people can access starlink. Occupying countries like Russia won't be able to knock out the internet if that country has a connection to starlink. So it is truly a game changer, I think, in terms of the ability of the authoritarian regimes to use technology, both to monitor their people and to control them and everything else. Imagine if your internet in China is not connected through the stuff that the Chinese monitors, but through starlink and therefore is bypassing all the Chinese servers. I think that is possible. So, you know, those of you who know the technology better than I do, this is a revolution. Yeah, North Korea, of course, you need a terminal. You need something that can receive the signal. So I don't know that the North Koreans have that, but we could smuggle those things in for them. So it is a game changer and it brings a tear to my eye to read a story like that where Elon Musk can just fulfill their needs like that. That is amazing. Yeah, action Jackson, maybe you can make a one minute video of my little tribute there to Elon Musk and Starlink, although it's more than a minute video, but you can make a short video of that. All right, so let's get down to talking about, talking about what's going on in Ukraine. So first, I want to remind everybody, remind everybody that we're still in the fog of war. There's still a lot more we don't know than we do know. I want to remind everybody that there's massive propaganda, massive propaganda on both sides of this. It's really hard to tell what is true and what is not. A lot of what we're seeing for a variety of reasons, and this is part of my comment earlier that Putin has lost is the Ukrainian side of this, because I'm following a lot of what's going on through Twitter and what you're getting is dominance on Twitter of kind of the Ukrainian side of things, the Russians are there as well and Russian agents if you will, many of them American on their trying to perpetuate the Russian propaganda story. But look, the Ukrainian side, I'm sure a lot of it is propaganda or a lot of it is exaggeration. So things like, I don't know if a lot of you saw this story about the ghost of Kiev. I thought it was such a cool story. And it is a cool story, whether it's true or not, it's still a cool story. Supposedly a Ukrainian fighter pilot knocked down in like the first or second day of the war, knocked down six Russian jets all by himself and he was labeled the ghost of Kiev. What a cool name, if you're gonna be a fighter pilot, the ghost of Kiev, cool name. Anyway, so people started, there was a video put up of a plane and said this is the ghost of Kiev, it turns out that video is off of a video game or something like that, so it has nothing to do with the real thing. It's not clear that anybody shot down six Russian planes from the AMAB ground missiles. It's not clear, any of this is true, it's not clear that there is such a fighter pilot, but it's great inspiration and that's the effect it has, right? So probably untrue, probably false, right? Most likely false, but a great story. There's now some doubt being placed on the 13 13 soldiers who said fuck you to the Russian boat and suppose the old got killed, not being willing to surrender. There's some now doubts about that, Russian propaganda at least is presenting the idea that they actually surrendered and there were 82 of them, not 13 and the Russians have them. So hard to tell if it's a true story or not. Great one-liners, great t-shirts, great motivation, great inspiration for the Ukrainians, whether it's true or whether it's not. That wasn't an f-bomb for me, that was me quoting the Ukrainians. Now there's video of the Ukrainians saying this, there's audio of the Ukrainians saying this, hard to tell whether this is true or not, I just don't know, that's the point, right? We don't know, we will know at some point, but a lot of staff, Ukrainians downed to transport aircraft with lots of maybe up to 150 to 200 Russian troops. Two downed big transport airplanes hasn't been confirmed by any satellite photos that I know hasn't been shown anywhere, right? So is it true or not? Hard to tell. Numbers of casualties, the Ukrainians are saying they've killed over 3,000 Russians. Sounds like a lot, maybe true, maybe not, hard to tell. So remember, it doesn't matter what side you are on here, I think you should be on one side, there's no question which side you should be on, but exactly what's going on in the ground, exactly what's going on in the ground, we don't really know, right? What we do know is Russia has not taken any of Ukraine's major cities yet. They're trying to encircle Kiev, they're trying to encircle a number of other cities in the south and in the northeast, but they haven't yet taken any city. And it's there's good reason to believe, I think. Again, you don't, they'll take my word for it, but it seems to be good reason to believe that the Russians thought that this was gonna be fast. Not because they thought it was gonna be fast because they thought there would be little resistance and they thought that many in Ukraine would embrace their welcome, just like some Americans thought the Iraqis would celebrate that the Americans were coming. So this is not going Russia's way. They still might win, they still probably will win, they have overwhelming force in a few days and a week, they might take Kiev, they might take Kiev tomorrow night, they haven't taken it tonight, it appears, but they might take it tomorrow night, it's hard to tell. But they haven't done it fast, they haven't done it overwhelming, their weapons systems seem to be failing, they seem to be confused, they seem to not know what they're really doing, they're running out of fuel, they are videos of Russians running, there's a funny video, this is a funny video of a, and again, I assume this is real, right? But today you can do weird things, but this is like a film from a cell phone, a guy is driving along a road in Ukraine and there's a Russian armed troop carrier parked along the side of the street, he stops, he says, hey, what's going on? Are you guys, have you guys broken down? And they say, no, we're out of gas. See, he says, hey, I can tow you back to Russia. And the Russians laugh, and he laughs, and then he says to them, do you know where you're going? And they say, no, now, they're probably saying no because they're not allowed to say, even if they know where they're going, they're not allowed to say, he says, you're going to Kiev, you're on the road to Kiev. And then, again, he laughs, they laugh, and he drives off. You know, you're getting a lot of videos like that, a lot of videos of T-72s smashed and destroyed not only by US Javelin, but also they're also getting these anti-tank missiles from the UK, NWAD, I think, NWAD, they seem to be incredibly effective. And it really looks like the Ukrainians are holding their own, are fighting, they really don't have tanks, they don't have armored vehicles, but they've got stinger missiles taking down airplanes and taking down helicopters, and they've got these personalized anti-tank, and as I told you before, the T-72 is not a good tank and cannot survive these anti-tank missiles. So you've got the Ukrainians really holding on. So in spite of the fact that we don't really know the details of what's going on, and we don't really know if the stories we are told are real, are true, we just don't know because of the amount of propaganda that's out there on both sides, what we certainly know is that this is not going the way I think the Russians expected. That's coming out too, Pentagon is saying that the UK intelligence services are saying that. I mean, maybe they have an incentive to demoralize the Russians, I don't know, but it seems really to be true. The ghost of Kiev, airplane is fake, whether somebody actually shot down those Russian planes, who knows, but it probably not. It's probably awfully, it's probably all fake. The Javelins, so Ukrainians are putting up a fight much better I think than anybody expected. It really is inspiring. It may be the most inspiring thing about the Ukrainians. And here you can see it on video, so this is not fake news, this is not old video, because you can see it, it's in real time, you can observe it. The thing most impressive about everything that's going on right now in Ukraine is the president of Ukraine. I mean, wow. I mean, he's just been amazing. He has taken up arms, gone into the streets, positioned himself at least, he tells us on video that he's leading from the front, he's got his whole cabinet with him, all in military gear, he is mingling with the soldiers, he is defying the Russians, he's defying the Americans. Americans are telling him, we will provide you with transportation out, we'll take you to Lviv, we'll take you to Poland. And he's like, I don't need, right, I don't need a way out, I need more weapons, I need more javelins, I need more support, I'm staying right here and I'm gonna fight the Russians in the streets. I mean, he's inspiring. He is young, full of energy, defiant, standing up for what he believes, not willing to give up anything, not willing to compromise, at least not yet. And just, I mean, I guess the one liner is I need ammunition, not a ride. That's what they've, you know, again, that's what they've made it into, that's a t-shirt, I think, ready to be made. I need ammunition, not a ride. He's truly been stunning and amazing. And if you compare him to Putin, ugly, angry, brooding, a little demonic, a little weird, a little crazy, calling people names. You know, we're gonna go after the Nazis, we're gonna, the neo-Nazis, we're gonna go out and we'll talk about neo-Nazis in a minute. We're gonna go after all these, you know, calling them, calling, here's a comedian, a comedian. Used to be a comedian on television. He played a president in a, like a VIP program, a comedy on Ukrainian politics. It's, here he is, brand new president, has been president for three years and is in a position to, and could easily have gotten out of there, could easily have run, could easily have hidden. He's Jewish for whatever, you know, that just stands against the stupid claim of the Nazis. And he's, I mean, I wish we had more presidents like him. He's got balls. You know, call him what you wanna call him. He's got balls. What American president? I don't know if the last 50 years would act like he acts. I don't think any one of them, not one of them, not one of them. They would have been hiding in a bunker some way. So good for him. He's courageous. I mean, the whole world is cheering him now. I think that he is gonna be, he is gonna be, go down as somebody who is admired and respected and no matter what happens, killed, he tried, hung, but executed, hopefully none of those, hopefully survives this. But whatever happens to him, he will go down as the memorable figure and Putin will go down as the bad guys. As the bad guys. So, UK president is unbelievable performance. He is at every press conference, at every kind of appeal. He is doing some of his appeal in Russian and he is speaking to the Russian people. And you should read his statements to the Russian people that translate into English. You can find them online. Powerful stuff, powerful stuff. So, I commend him for the work that he is doing. It's truly impressive. And again, when you compare him to Putin and the anger and the mysticism, the collectivism, the tribalism that Putin has enacted and here's the guy, in defense, you know, comes across, he's under attack. He, they're trying to kill him. The Russians are closing in on his capital. He's in the streets of his capital. And he sounds a thousand times more rational. A thousand times more rational. Sabio is asking, why am I wearing two small watches? All right, this is my iPhone. This is my Apple watch, my regular Apple watch. I always wear it. It's what I do. I just purchased one of these. It's called a WOOP. It's a WOOP 4.0. And it's supposed to be a good sleep tracker, recovery, a bunch of variables that I'm interested in in terms of health. I think I told you my plan is to live to be 150. So, this is part of my plan. Just getting data. Getting data on what this old body is doing and how it's responding. So, I just got it. This is the first time it's on. It's W-H-O-O-P. I should get them to be sponsors if you're gonna go buy them. W-H-O-O-P. And I don't know if they're any good because I just got it. I did some research and they look like they provide you with some really interesting data that's different than the data you get on the iWatch. Yeah, it's kind of like a Fitbit, but very focused in the kind of data it's gonna get. But I'll let you know in about a week or two. It takes four days to calibrate, to kind of adjust to my particular body to get the data and to start setting a benchmark. So, I'll let you know in a week or two what this is all about. I'm not super human, but I'm trying to be. My goal is to achieve super humanity, whatever the hell that means. All right, so good for the president of Ukraine. Okay, what else can we say? Yeah, let's talk about Europe. Europe has never been so united. And this is what I mean by Putin has lost. Europe has never been so united. Not on any issue, not on any single issue. Has the European been as united as it is right now? Every single member of the European Union has agreed to the most stringent and strictest sanctions against Russia, including today, taking Russia off Swift, which allows for transactions across countries. Now this is massive, huge. And the reason this is is, think about the countries at the European Union, think about how many of them on many respects beholden to Putin or were unbelievably friendly to Putin. Serbia and Belarus are not part of the European Union and unlikely to become part of the European Union. As I'm talking about European Union has united, right? The European Union is more united than it's ever been. So you've got today Cyprus agreeing, because you see the European Union has, only comes to the decisions if they're unanimous, unanimous. So one member can stop sanctions on the Russians. Cyprus today, Cyprus today has agreed to sanction, to take them off Swift. Cyprus was resisting. Germany was resisting taking them off Swift until yesterday. Germany came on board. And then the shocker, the thing that really I think shocked everybody and should shock Putin and should shock the nationalist right in America, is that Orban in Hungary has signed off on all of the package of sanctions against Putin, all of them. Orban, the American rights favorite authoritarian and Putin's biggest buddy in Europe, Orban, has turned against Putin. Country after country in Europe is taking away Russia's overflight rights. So Estonia told the Russians not to fly over it. Many other countries in Europe have said the same thing. So what you're seeing is the European Union coming together. They still got the problem, a big problem of gas, natural gas and oil. And we'll get to natural gas and oil in a minute. We'll get to the United States all in that. And we'll get to why it's such a huge issue. But yes, a Germany who has been reluctant to do anything against Russia is completely on board now, so far on board that this afternoon, the Germans have announced that they will send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 stingers, these are the missiles that knocked down airplanes, to Ukraine. And they're on, they're supposedly they're on the way going through Poland to Ukraine. So it's gonna be a question of will Russia shut down the gas to Germany? And this is the thing, Russia can't afford to shut down the gas. Russia can't afford to stop exporting. I think it's reaching a point. I mean, Turkey has turned against Russia. Turkey supposedly is shipping, Turkey has in the past already supplied Ukraine with drones. A lot of the air campaign that what do you call it, what do you call it, that Ukraine is engaged in, is using Turkish drones. And what is going on right now is that Turkey, in addition to continuing to supply, is turning against Russia. There was even a rumor at some point, the president of Ukraine claimed that the Turks had agreed to close the Bosphorus Straits to Russian ships. And I don't think that's true. I don't think they've agreed, Turkey denied that. But Turkey is standing up to the Russians and denouncing them with no uncertain terms. The, indeed the only world leader, the only world leader to explicitly support Putin is Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Even Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, which was bailed out by the Russians just what, two months ago, refused to send troops. Putin asked for troops they refused. So what we're seeing is dramatic unity among the EU. I don't think, I don't think Putin expected this. I don't think this is Putin expected this. And the oligarchs are kind of panicking. I mean, I don't know if you saw today, but the owner of Chelsea, a Russian oligarch who's the only of Chelsea has relinquished control over the club and given it to a British foundation, I think in his name, a foundation named after him, but a British foundation, because he has banned from, in a sense, exerting his control over the club in England. But they're realizing that they are isolated now. They can't travel, the assets have frozen overseas. Now it's true that Russia has a lot of gold and it has supposedly a lot of Bitcoin. But gold you have to be able to sell. It's not clear who they can sell it to. It's not clear who the agents would be. So there is a massive, Europe has a problem in terms of ways they're gonna get substantial gas if Russia turns off the spigots. But if Russia turns off the spigots, that's a third of its economy goes up and spoken and the Chinese can't bail them out from that. They can't buy enough. Remember, Germany economy is a massive economy, even as compared to, certainly as compared to the Russian economy, it's much bigger than the Russia. But even as compared to China, it's a big economy. I even think, I'm pretty sure, and you know, I can't speak for the Chinese, but my guess is right now, the Chinese are nervous. The Chinese are nervous. Because it's not good for them to back the wrong horse here. Already the world was turning against China. China can't really afford to piss off the entire world. This is why I do not think they will invade Taiwan anytime soon. They can't afford it. They've just seen relatively, I mean, again, I don't think these are harsh enough. I think the Europe and the United States are still being wimpy about this. They should all bring the ambassadors home. They should all denounce, I mean, they should all reject diplomatic relations. Brian, thank you for the support, appreciate it. They should all reject diplomatic relations with Russia completely. But relative to the relative weakness that the West always exhibits, it has been relatively united and relatively strong. China's watching it. China doesn't want to be taken off swift. China doesn't want to be excluded from foreign financial markets. China is completely integrated into the world's financial market system. It can't afford what Russia is happening to Russia. Russia can't afford this. And this is why Putin has already lost. He's been completely isolated diplomatically, completely. He stands with Bashar al-Assad of Syria, with North Korea, with Iran, and with Venezuela. He has lost. Oh, you know, the only other people standing with him are the American national conservatives. We'll get to that, right? He is losing many, many more troops and much more equipment than anybody would have expected. And I think that the Russians are likely to turn on him, even if they don't, nobody has the guts to overthrow him. His popularity in Russia is going to plummet, even if he wins. I think you see that in the fact that according to observers, almost 3,000 Russians have been arrested in protests all over Russia. 3,000 people are arrested. How many people are arrested per person who demonstrates? One in a hundred? Well, that would mean that the 300,000 people demonstrating, that's a lot of people in Russia, knowing that you're likely to be arrested. So, his last support at home, I think, and his losing support at home, he is universally across the world being denounced. Even Israel finally denounced him. The foreign minister of Israel finally did it. Israel is afraid because they don't wanna piss him off too much because he's on the northern border, in Syria, basically. He has no friends. Even the Kazakhstan, as I said, turned him down. He has Belarus, that's it. Belarus and Syria are his friends. He has to sell natural gas to Germany, he has no options. He would starve his people if he didn't. So, you know, he's, you know, I don't think he's finished because it's hard to replace strong men like Putin. It's hard to get rid of them. But he has lost. He's lost prestige. I mean, people who know him, I've seen Twitter and articles about this. People who say they know him, known him for 20, 30 years, say he's off, he's not quite there. And this is, of course, the great danger. The great danger is that Putin is indeed completely lost it. And if Putin is completely lost it, you know, he has the largest by numbers, largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. You don't wanna put that into the hands of somebody who's lost it. So hopefully, hopefully the people in the Kremlin will keep an eye on him who are not suicidal, who do not wanna see Russia being obliterated and will hold off. So we'll keep him same. So, you know, I think Putin is in deep, deep, deep trouble. I don't know how he gets out of this mess, Bonnie. I don't know, it's him as he created. It was a necessary mess, it didn't need it. It doesn't serve any purpose. And he's lost, he's already lost. And the Russian people have lost. So, you know, it's a sad, if you will, statsate of affairs for the Russian people. Hopefully, he'll be retired in the next few months. You know, I think they'll try to win in some kind of victory. They'll occupy Kiev, replace the government there, have an insurgency, but maybe leave quickly, and then replace Putin and then let the Ukrainians have an election or something and get it right and try to move on from this somehow and try to patch things up with the West. I don't know, I don't know. If anybody overthrows Putin, it will have to be within. If it has to be from his inner circle, it's not gonna come from the outside. It has to be the generals, or it has to be other people in the Kremlin. But he's been isolated. Putin, from all reports, took COVID very seriously, has isolated himself throughout COVID, part of the reason for these big tables. And according to many people has lost it. All right, two other points I wanna make. One, I wanna make a point about natural gas and about oil. So do you know that the United States of America, in spite of running a surplus of natural gas, in spite of being an exporter of natural gas, there are regions in the United States that import natural gas through liquefied natural gas by ship, in other words. From Russia, do you know that, like New England, sometimes inputs natural gas in the winter from Russia? And do you know why that is? Why would New England have to import natural gas in Russia when you could get natural gas in Pennsylvania? Well, the reason is that sometimes if the weather gets particularly cold and natural gas consumption peaks, the gas pipes that are leading into New England just can't handle the volume of natural gas that somebody like New England requires. So they need additional natural gas. Now, why don't they ship it? If you can breed it in by ship, why don't they ship it through the Port of Baltimore, which has an LNG terminal to a port off of Boston where they have an LNG terminal and just ship it that way? Ah, because of something called the Jones Act. And I've talked about the Jones Act before, but it's important here to talk about it in this context. One of the reasons we're importing natural gas from the Russians, Soviet Union, that's a Freudian slip. One of the reasons is because we have the Jones Act. We have the Jones Act. The Jones Act prohibits a ship from traveling between two American ports, unless the ship it was built in the U.S. Sorry, no, manned by U.S. sailors, carries a U.S. flag and is owned by a U.S. entity. So it has to have crew that are Americans. It has to have an American flag and it has to be owned by Americans. There's not a single LNG ship that has those characteristics, not a single one. So even though I could ship natural gas from Maryland or from Houston directly to Boston, I cannot do it legally. And therefore, Boston has to import natural gas. So it's easy. Do away with the Jones Act. I mean, as a Puerto Rican, it would reduce my cost of living significantly. Do away with the Jones Act. It's the dumbest ever. We should have done it after Hurricane Maria. They should have done it years ago, decades ago. It's an 80-year-old law or something. Nobody did it. Trump was urged to do it, wouldn't do it. Biden certainly won't do it. But get rid of the Jones Act and you solve the problem of the United States importing natural gas. There's zero reason for the U.S. to import natural gas. Now, what about oil? We import oil from Russia. Why do we import oil from Russia when we have lots of oil? And we could also get oil from Mexico. We can also get oil from Canada. Well, it turns out that some of the refineries that we have in the Southern United States were built to handle what's called heavy oil. And primarily they were built to refine heavy oil that came from Venezuela. This is low-quality heavy oil. But we've stopped importing oil from Venezuela because of sanctions we have against Venezuela. And we have not built the Keystone Pipeline from Canada which was supposed to bring heavy oil into the United States to be refined. So we don't have any heavy oil from Canada. And oil in the United States is primarily light. It's not heavy. So for these refineries to work, to have something to do, we need to import heavy oil from somewhere and the country that has the heavy oil is Russia. So we bring heavy oil from Russia, refine it in Houston, Louisiana, wherever that is. And that's why we import oil. Not because we need oil, we have a surplus of oil, but because our refineries, too many of them are built to deal with heavy oil. Just as an aside, if we had Keystone, we wouldn't be importing, again, very easy, build Keystone, and Keystone will take years to build. So in the meantime, we still got a problem. All right, what else do I wanna say before we get to NATO? Okay, one last thing I wanna say. Something really interesting is happening on the right. And I think it's too soon to say what the outcome is going to be and how this will play out. But it is worth watching. And you know that I have a acute interest on the right, in the right, and therefore I will be watching it. But something interesting is happening on the right. There is clearly a split over Russia. There are those that have always been suspicious of Russia, even Trump supporters like Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz, that have always been suspicious of Russia. And very anti-Putin and have always been anti-Putin and seem like they're on the right side of history right now in terms of the Russian conflict. And they had been sidelined by a second group that seems to have been very pro-Putin. You know, you can include Trump, you can include, what's his name? God, the Secretary of State under Trump starts with a P. You can include a Tucker Carlson and you can include a few others who up until the invasion, up until the invasion, were enamored by Putin. Putin was brilliant, Putin was a strategist, Putin was, you know, had the Western world around his finger. Pompeo, thank you, Scott, Pompeo. Putin was God, right? Not quite God, but a little bit like God. Trump has been pro-Putin throughout his presidency. He's been, he admires Putin. I think he likes Putin a lot and certainly has. Those people, many of them have pivoted. Trump gave a speech, I think, tonight, so I don't know what he said because the speech was, I think, the same time as I went on, so I don't know what he said, but Pompeo and so these other guys, they pivoted. And now they're very anti-Putin and even Tucker Carlson is like hedging his bats and he's not for Putin anymore and he's kind of all over the place. And they're really in trouble, I think, because clearly we have quotes and the anti-Putin people are going to use these quotes against these guys in elections in the future. All the quotes where they praised Putin and they thought Putin was clever and smart and wonderful and all this stuff. See, you've got one side that was anti-Putin. Another side that has become anti-Putin was very complimentary of Putin. And I definitely unequivocally include Trump in that. And then the third group is still with Putin, admires Putin, loves Putin, still is defending Putin, is constantly on Twitter and other places reinforcing Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine. And this is where the national conservatives come in. They seem to have hitched their wagon to the Putin wagon. I follow Soha Bamaari, who I think is the most despicable of all of them. And Amari is like a propaganda machine for Putin. It's crazy how bad he is. And he is on Twitter now, even now, after the invasion, after everything that's going on, still supporting Putin. I think that part of the weight is gonna be thoroughly discredited with the fall of Putin. So the middle group that flipped is gonna be somewhat discredited. But what's gonna happen to the national conservatives who truly view Putin as the hero, as the model that they wanted? You know, he is the white Christian defender of the faith, defendant of Western civilization. Is he out playing the cognitively troubled Joe Biden? I don't think so. I don't think Putin is out playing Biden at all. Putin has failed, Biden is weak, but Biden's on the right side of history here. Biden's doing weak, but he's doing the right thing. Putin is on the wrong side of history. Putin is a failure. And he has not outmoved Biden because Biden is gonna come out good after this. And Putin is gonna come out destroyed after this. As much as I despise Biden, he is not gonna lose from this. He is not. But Putin is, Biden is gonna be seen as a coalition form. I mean, not by me, but by the world. I bet you his approval rating is actually increased as the crisis in Ukraine develops. But Putin is finished. Even if he stays in power, he is finished. And yet these people have hitched their wagon to him. And then Orban, who they love even more than Putin. Orban is the real model for them. Orban has turned his back on Putin. So even Orban is not going along with his support for Putin. You all can fantasize about what would have happened if Trump was in power, but I don't believe it for a minute. I mean, I think Putin would have outmaneuvered Trump much better than he would have outmaneuvered Biden. Biden is slow, but Trump is at a different level of able to be manipulated and twisted around his finger. But who knows what Putin would have done with Trump. It's hard to imagine, but this idea that you know that it wouldn't have happened that the Trump is just ludicrous if you watch Trump's foreign policy and how pathetic and ridiculous it was. How the Chinese twisted him around their finger, how they played him completely, how the North Koreans played him completely. No reason to think that Putin would have played him completely. Yeah, Trump, Xi, Zhu, Yang says, I can't pronounce any. Trump would probably be worried about saving face and that's all he would matter to him. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, let's see. See, yeah, I think watching what happens on the right is gonna be interesting. I'll just say this, CPAC is being held right now. CPAC had a lot of pro-Putin people like the former Democratic House member from Hawaii, whose name against, fail me, but you guys know who she is. And a lot of other wackos. But anyway, Mark Levin was there. And what's really interesting to me is that Mark Levin, I haven't read the whole speech, I just read a section of it, I'm gonna read the whole thing. But Mark Levin came out shooting full bluster anti-nationalism, anti-populism. Mark Levin, who was a huge supporter of Trump, anti-nationalism, anti-populism, and what did he advocate for? Americanism, individual rights. Mark Levin found himself again after five years of being buried away somewhere. So Mark Levin did a good job at CPAC and the people in CPAC, according to reports I read, didn't know what to make of it because they didn't know, are we supposed to cheer? I mean, he's Mark Levin, but he's saying this stuff. It sounds like he's attacking Trump. Should we reproach, should we be against it? He's attacking Sahaba Maori, he's attacking the national conservatives. So the right is going through some good spasms, some real spasms. This is good. This is good stuff. I mean, if we can get Mark Levin to be more of the Mark Levin from before Trump than the Trumpist Mark Levin, that will be a big step in the right direction. He's, you know, he really, he said, populism is American Marxism. So really interesting, I think, this, that the Ukraine crisis is going to force that the people on the right to clearly identify who they are and what they stand for and what they represent. So now, again, I haven't read the speech. You know, I'm sure there's a lot of religion and that stuff which is pretty standard for Levin and for the right, but he can be better and he has been better in the past. So it'll be, it's going to be interesting to read the speech and see if it was true. And if it is true, then it'll probably be the only good speech in CPAC because CPAC was unbelievable. Yeah, Charlie Cook gave a horrible speech, a nationalist conservative and populism and just awful. So the American right is fracturing. And I think it's the Ukraine crisis that is bringing this to the forefront. Whoa, we've already gone an hour and I didn't get to my NATO topic. Okay, so before we get to NATO, we're way behind on the super chat, which is, you know, we've got a lot of people here. So first, we've got 270 people listening right now live. Please give us a thumbs up if you like the show, if you're enjoying the show, if you see any value in the show, please give it a thumbs up. It really helps with the algorithm. We should have over 200 thumbs up right now and it really helped promote the show and get it more visibility. So thank you. If anybody, if you guys are willing to do that, that'd be terrific. Let me, on top of that, say that, you know, one of the ways people support the show, you can support the show on a monthly kind of basis through PayPal on uranbrookshow.com slash support on Patreon or subscribe, but one of the most effective ways to support the show is right here on YouTube through super chat. You can both become a member of the uranbrook show by clicking join down below the video. And it's, I think it's 5.99 right now and that will, you'll get all kinds of perks and we'll get some additional videos up there for you. But also you can use the super chat. The super chat to support the show, our target for every show is $600. We're still around 400 short of that target. Yesterday we exceeded it by a lot. I'm hoping we can exceed it again today. So, you know, we're short about $400. It would be great as usual to get to that $400. We've had almost a perfect February. I think we missed one day in all of February. So let's hope that today is not another missed day. So thank you for all the super chat as we've already asked questions. Most of the questions like $5, $10, $20 get us really there fast and I'll answer the $20 questions first. So we'll get to answering questions in a minute, but I know a lot of you are not usually listening to your own book show live. Please investigate this super chat feature. If you find this at all interesting, $2 is great, $500 is fantastic, but it's value for value. If you're getting value for me, you're listening free, it's nice to be able to be a trader and to return the value you get at whatever price level you can afford to do. All right, let's see. Yeah, we're getting a bunch of stuff. Let me just say something about NATO and then Stephen, thank you for the support. I appreciate it. So NATO was founded, was in 1949, I think, after World War II, basically as a response to the Soviet Union. It was founded as a response to the fear of the growth of communism in Europe and around the world. And it was founded really as an alliance to defend Europe from the Russians, from the Soviets and to defend Europe from a potential Soviet invasion. And if you know the history, Europe was devastated. There was nothing in Europe. They had no money, they had no resources, they had no military, the militaries had been decimated. Even the British who'd won the war were poor, the Germans were gone, the French were divided and destroyed with no real military. Europe was devastated. And the United States basically came in and said, okay, we'll defend you, we'll guarantee your safety by positioning forces in Europe, by giving you a nuclear umbrella and basically keeping the Soviets away. Keeping the Soviets at bay. Now, I in Rand always thought that that was a mistake of the United States and I agree with her. And certainly it was a mistake going into the 70s, 80s, 90s. Europe should be in a left alone to fend for itself. Certainly once it got rich enough to fend for itself, it should have been allowed to fend for itself. One of the few things I agreed with Trump on is that they should pay more to be in NATO. But of course, I don't believe they should pay more. I just think the United States should leave NATO. I don't think the United States should be there and with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat of a Soviet Union was gone. Now, there's was still the threat of Russia. But again, not a threat to the United States. The threat was to Europe. Europe is rich. Europe can defend itself. Then why is the United States a member of NATO? So my view has always been, they should be a NATO. But without the United States, I think European countries have good reason to fear the Russians. We're seeing it now. And they have good reason to form an alliance. They countries border one another. They, an alliance of free countries and that should be the standard. You have to be free to be a member of NATO and you could qualify what free means and where on the spectrum of freedom do you count. But you gotta be a free country. You can join NATO and you get a security guarantee. France is a nuclear power and a member of NATO. It wasn't for a while. The UK is a nuclear power and a member of NATO. So there is a nuclear umbrella over Europe provided by the UK and France and they could get more resources from a combined NATO and increase their nuclear capabilities. But there's absolutely no reason for the United States to be part of this. Josh, thank you and I'll make sure to get your question first thing once we get to questions. Thank you, $50. That is very generous and gets us that much closer to our goal, which is fantastic. So I believe in a European alliance of NATO I think it's important. And of course, the nice thing about NATO is that it's voluntary. You don't have to become a member of NATO. Sweden, a free country. Finland, a free country. Switzerland, a free country. Have indeed never become members of NATO. They benefit from the fact that NATO exists, particularly Switzerland, given that it's the heart of Europe and any power would have to go through these other countries to get there. But they don't join NATO. And the beauty of NATO is that it's a volunteer organization. You wanna be a part of this mutually mutual security deal. If you're a free country, you're welcome. You don't have to. You can free ride, Switzerland free rides. Now, this is the point about all these Eastern European countries joining NATO. Poland joined because it wanted to. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia joined because they wanted to. They have sovereignty. They are free countries. And they joined NATO out of their own free will. Because they wanted security guarantees because they were afraid of the Russians. And justifiably so, because believe me, if Estonia and Latvia were not part of the European Union, they would be taken over by Russia like that. Like that. In a day, they're gone. They're very small, tiny populations. Lithuania, sorry, Estonia has a million and a half people, very tiny countries. This is not Poland with 44 million people in a largest country in Europe or the second largest country in Europe. So people on the right are saying, ooh, we should have never admitted these countries into NATO. Why not? NATO is a defensive organization. Indeed, if Russia had applied to join NATO, and it was free, it's not, so it wouldn't be allowed, but it was free, then what? Yeah, at that point you would have dissolved NATO because you don't need it anymore. But it's none of Russia's business, what Lithuania and Estonia do. It's none of Russia's business, what Ukraine does. If Ukraine wants to join NATO, why is it any of Russia's business? NATO has never shown signs of aggression, has never been an offensive tool, not as NATO. So this is just, this is just a pretense. This is just an excuse. This idea of, ooh, we offended the Russians. Ooh, we egged them into this. Ooh, it's all our fault, all America's fault for accepting all these countries into NATO. And yeah, maybe we broke a deal we had with the Russians not to accept these countries into NATO. We should have never had the deal. What kind of deal is that? We also broke the deal with Ukraine, saying that we would defend them if Russia ever aggressed against them when they gave up their nuclear weapons. We broke that deal too. So no, NATO is a, as close as there is to a proper form of alliance, it's a self-defense alliance. It's an alliance of free countries. Again, nobody is forced to participate. Somebody said Austria is not part of NATO. I think that's right, Portugal is not part of NATO. Portugal, again, is free writing because nobody can get to Portugal unless they go through the rest of Europe. Yeah, you don't have to be a member. And one of the potential ways in which Putin loses, I said this the other day, one of the ways in which Putin loses is if Finland and Sweden, because of what's happening in Ukraine, decide to join NATO. And I just saw, there was a poll done today or yesterday in Sweden. And Sweden, the votes have typically been against, the population typically being against, oh, Portugal is part of NATO. I don't know, somebody on the chat said that it wasn't part of NATO. Yeah, I didn't, yeah, I thought they were. Thank you for correcting that. Portugal is part of NATO. What was I saying? Oh, that Sweden historically, the population's been against joining NATO. The latest poll shows a overwhelming majority of Swedes want to join NATO. Ragnar of the Desert has just contributed $200. Thank you, Ragnar. Really, really appreciate it. So we are now at 517, so 500, no, 534. So we don't need much to get to the $600 that would be great, but thank you, Ragnar. That is very, very generous. And Ragnar of the Desert has to be one of the great names. Has to be one of the great names. He's the pirate of the desert. So let's hope Finland and Sweden, I think Finland and Sweden joining NATO would be like icing on the cake. It would be so cool and it would be so good and it would be so crushing for Putin. It would basically be completely and utterly demoralizing for the Kremlin. So let's hope that happens, that would be terrific. All right, I think that's what I wanted to say. One hour, 10 minutes, not bad. The world needs a lot more Ragnars, absolutely. Not just of the desert, but of the seas and of we need a Ragnar of Ukraine. There's a good nickname, the Ragnar of Ukraine. Charging in, destroying Russian tanks and charging out and weaving between, anyway, you can imagine it for yourself. On a jeep with a javelin launcher, driving up to Poland, restocking the javelins and off they go again to destroy more Russian tanks. There's a movie there, there's a movie there somewhere. There are a number of socialist members of NATO, of NATO, so Portugal's not the only one. Although Portugal did elect a pretty socialist government recently. I might become a citizen of Portugal one day. That is a possibility. Let's see, one more passport, never hoods. Never hoods, they have more passwords. Okay, let's start with Josh because Josh put $50 onto his question. I think that's the only $50 question I have. Yeah, we got a few $20. So we do Josh and then we do the $20 questions. Okay, finish my second read of the font here today. Congratulations, hope you really enjoyed it. Was refreshing, uplifting. Hearing China is starting to signal, not directly, but more manipulation of their citizens' attitudes. Their intent to take North Korea with the potential to take South Korea too. Really, I mean, is that what you mean? I don't think China's going to war with South Korea. I don't think that is in the cards. I don't think there's any chance of that happening. They would take Taiwan before they took South Korea. South Korea would be a disaster for them. Again, it would involve American troops. It would involve them being at war with the United States. China does not want to go to war with the United States. They could take Taiwan. It's not clear that the United States will intervene. United States will intervene if they go into South Korea. We have troops there. We have a defense treaty with South Korea. Free trade, thank you for the support. So there's no question they will not take South Korea. Now, North Korea, I don't think they want North Korea. I hope they take North Korea. China is freer than North Korea is. So for the sake of the people of North Korea, I hope China occupies it. It would be better if South Korea occupied it, but if that's not gonna happen, then let the Chinese have it. But no, I don't think any of that is going to happen. It's too costly for China to do. And what's the benefit from them to take North Korea? It's just no benefit. There's no upside. Unless there's something going on in North Korea that is a real threat to the Chinese. All right, let's see. I'm at $20 questions. All right, anonymous user, $20 says, Boycott Russia and Belarus, absolutely. If any compromise, in any compromise between good and evil, evil wins. Absolutely, I agree. Let's see, and that includes Germany, they stopped buying natural gas on them. I don't know. You know, there are four LNG facilities that are waiting to be built in the United States or in various stages of being built in the United States. If we want to do anything, rush that. Start building that like crazy. In Germany, start building LNG plants. And let's get a convoy of LNG natural gas in the United States going to Germany. This is the funny thing. This is the funny slash very, very sad thing. It actually is easier to export natural gas from Houston to Germany than it is to bring natural gas from Houston to Boston. The one is legal, the one is illegal. You are not allowed to bring the natural gas to Boston because of the Jones Act, but you can't take it to Germany. So let's take it to Germany. Let's do it. And let's encourage all those frackers in West Texas and in Oklahoma. Go for it, guys. And then maybe we stop fracking in Europe. Do you know that Ukraine has one of the biggest natural gas reserves in Europe at least? Maybe the biggest in Europe. If they only fact, Ukraine? Okay, Ryan asked, why do you think so many people fred over nukes? Mutually assured, destruction is a strong deterrent. Yes, it is. Putin says 100 away from all visitors due to COVID. I'm confident these does not want to die in a nuclear fire. I agree with you. The only question is, has he lost it completely? Is he not completely lost it? So that's the only risk. And the risk with a place like Iran is that their religious fervor would justify them committing suicide by using the nukes as a form of jihad. That's the risks. Most non-religious, crazy people would never use a nuke because of the mutual assured destruction. Brea asked $20, the green left has handed this power to Russia with their solar fantasies or any future discussion of environment or Ukraine must be framed by this, absolutely. Absolutely, and Germany has walked right into this. This is Greta's fault. We should blame Greta. Germany has shut down its nuclear power plants. And by shutting down its nuclear power plant, it has made itself reliant on Russian natural gas and Polish coal. Ukraine also has massive reserves of coal. So Ukraine should be supplying energy to the rest of you. And that is absolutely, that's fear mongering from the left. So the environmentalists have a lot of blame for the current situation. It's why Russia has money, any at all. Georgia is not protected under Article 5 because Georgia is not a member of NATO. NATO has not accepted Georgia or Ukraine into NATO. So NATO has been irresponsible in that respect. Now, it's not clear that NATO wants Georgia. Georgia does not have a border contingent with other European nations. It's far away. It would be really, really difficult to defend Georgia from Europe. It's not clear that Georgia makes sense for NATO to embrace, assuming NATO is a European entity, not an American entity. I would like to see America get out and make it a European. Free countries in Europe should be members of NATO. Jeff, 30 Canadian dollars. Don't like seeing my name in green, green with envy, green movement, et cetera, but from our Batra prairie when it is ripe and golden. Even Alberta oil is black gold. How much to get one of the other colors to join options showing? Let me see if I can switch colors, although green's a beautiful color. It's the color of trees. A certain green, you can get that kind of greenish color in the ocean. Green's a nice color. It's a nice color. Don't let the stupid environmentalists turn you off of the color green. Don't let them destroy your ability to enjoy life, to enjoy the color green in life. So don't let them get to you like that. It's not worth it. But yeah, let me see if I can tweak the thing. I also want, in a membership thing, we'll also start doing different levels. I think of memberships, you'll be able to not just give 5.99, but we'll see we'll work on that. But yeah, please join. Join the Iran Book Show by becoming, remember you can press the join button below. And please use the super chat to contribute to today's show and to contribute to the show if you're on, and ask me a question, of course. And you can become a long-term, you can become a member also, different way to become a member by going in iranbrookshow.com, slash support or Patreon or subscribe star. There's just a million ways to become a member of the Iran Book Show. Don't use them, utilize them. It's fun. It's cool. All right, let's see, another 20. Mike goes back. All right, he's got a bunch of $20 questions. Will Russia stop at Ukraine or will they invade Poland or Georgia? That's prompting a third world war. They will stop in Ukraine. They're gonna have their hands full with Ukraine. It's not clear that they're gonna be able to win Ukraine, never mind have the energy to go on elsewhere. I've told you before, Russia's not a rich country. Russia's gonna run out of missiles and they do not have the manufacturing capacity to build more. Even the Americans, in some of the operations in the Middle East ran out of missiles and it was a challenge to get new missiles made to replenish the stock. Russia has a far, far inferior productive capability than the Americans do. So Russia cannot replenish. They cannot fight a two-front war. They cannot go to Georgia while they're fighting in Ukraine and they suddenly won't go to Poland because if they go to Poland they would war with NATO and I've said this the other day, even without nuclear, NATO will wipe them out like that. Russia has no ability to stand up to NATO. Russia will lose every airplane in their fleet. The tanks will be decimated. Again, T-72s, T-80s, T-90s cannot go up against the Abrams tank or the German tank or the British tank. They just get wiped out. Not to mention, it's hard even to comprehend the extent to which the West is superior technologically to the Russians in every respect in terms of weapon systems. So I've told you this over and over and over again. The Russian army is not a good army. It is not a good army. It has never been a good army. It could throw numbers at Hitler, could throw numbers at Napoleon. That's it. And remember, China is a shrinking country, not China, Russia is a shrinking country. China is an impoverished country. China, third of its GDP is export of natural resources. A third. China is in a really, really, really, really weak position here. It's, yeah, and they're losing, not necessarily on the battlefield, but they're losing in the big scope of things. They're losing, as I said they would. And even in the battlefield, they're not winning anywhere near as fast as they thought they would. Europe without the United States would still defeat Russia easily. It wouldn't have as many troops, although I don't know how many troops NATO has if you exclude the US, I don't know the number. But their technological superiority and primarily in the air, they would control the air. Notice, by the way, this is an important point about why Russia's not winning fast in Ukraine. Russia does not have a supremacy. They don't control the air in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force is still flying, which is shocking. Ukrainian drones are still flying. And Ukrainian air defense systems are still functioning. The whole point of the early attack on Ukraine was to take those out and they failed. They failed to take them out. On top of that, I said something about the Russians can't fight at night. Every single indication is that the Russians cannot fight at night. They must have some night vision technology, but it's not well integrated into their armored vehicles. It's not well integrated into their tanks and it's not well integrated into their... They're not trained, obviously. Why? In the modern world, in the world in which we live in, in the 21st century, would you attack a dawn? Remember, the Russians attacked a dawn. You attack it one in the morning. You get the maximum surprise, you get the maximum effect if you have night vision. They don't. They don't. Travis says the technocrats and buses are party boys, they're losers, no one to worry about. I agree that they're losers, but yet, in spite of that, they've just put a significant sanction package against Russia. It's not tough enough, I would be tougher, but it's more than Russia could have ever imagined. That's pretty stunning. I mean, only this war against Ukraine could have united the Europeans to the extent that they have united at the European Union level. It's truly stunning. Putin has achieved something unthinkable. So no, Russia is not gonna attack Poland and they're not gonna attack Georgia. Now, if they attack Georgia, it's not Third World War because Georgia is not part of NATO. Michael Ross asked, is it smart to keep 50K cash in a safe in case our unpredictable authoritarian government starts freezing bank accounts? If they freeze your account, how could you pay for a lawyer to fight them to get your money back? Yeah, assuming they can't come in and take your safe. It's not a bad idea to have cash in a safe or have gold coins in the safe. That's what I would do. I would have gold coins in my safe. So how much depends on your net worth? But, yes, having some money tucked away in a safe in the form of gold coins, not gold bars, which are very difficult to use and very difficult to exchange and very difficult to... Gold coins, which have low denominations. Anonymous users says, too many overestimated Russian technology. Yes, and not only that, here's the other thing, and I should have mentioned it when I said Russia was losing, has lost really, has already lost. Notice that Russia has not crippled Western Europe with a cyber attack. It's not clear that it even managed to cripple Ukraine with a cyber attack. Note that Russian TV went down today from a cyber attack from the West, probably from some cyber group like Anonymous. Supposedly Russian services been under attack all day by all kinds of groups. Note, the so-called Russian superiority and cyber has not really given them any advantage in the battlefield. Note also that it's so bad for Russia right now. They are so badly losing the misinformation slash propaganda war, which they are supposed to be the geniuses of that within Russia, they are trying to ban Twitter and Facebook, which is unthinkable. Russians dominate Twitter and Facebook, used to. They used to control Twitter and Facebook. They used to have millions of accounts and they used to dominate, but now they're afraid of their own people seeing all the Twitter and Facebook accounts, presenting information about how bad things are going in Ukraine. That's a sign you're losing. When you start censoring Twitter and Facebook to your own people, sign you're losing. So China on the strategic level, even if on a tactical level, they might be winning. On the strategic level, they are losing. Anonymous uses this as javelins, sweeping Russian helicopters and tanks. It seems that way again, be careful. It's the fog of war. We don't know what's real or what's not. We don't know what's Ukrainian propaganda. I don't blame them for issuing our propaganda, but it's very, very, very hard from afar to tell what is actually going on in the battlefield and day-to-day. It looks like the Ukrainians are having much more success than anybody predicted, but I warn you that it's hard to tell and you get excited. I retweeted some stories that are probably landing up gonna be not true. Yeah, I think it's great that we banned. I, again, Michael says like banning Trump from Twitter. I was so proud the day they banned Trump from Twitter. Not because I thought Trump was particularly bad in the sense of Twitter, but because I live in a country where private company can ban the president and get away with it. Now that's a country worth fighting for. That's a country worth living in. I imagine if Russian Twitter banned Putin, Okshi in China, it's super cool that you can live in a country where the political leader doesn't have the power to force you to listen to him and he can be banned. Justifiably unjustified, he doesn't even matter. Doesn't even matter. It's just that thought. I was like, when they banned him, I was like, yes, this is still America. No, what other country would do that? It's great. Sure they can ban Biden if they wanted to, they don't want to, they left this, so they don't want to ban Biden, but they could, they absolutely could. All right, it would be nice if they banned really crazy people like Islamic Jihad and people like that, but that's a whole other discussion. Michael Sanders says, is Russia's nonchalant invasion of Ukraine a sign that civilization is on winding faster than we thought? Is Taiwan next? Will there be a dominant effect? I've talked about Taiwan over and over again. I do not think we will see an invasion of Taiwan, but I do think Russia is invading in Ukraine, is a sign of the rising collectivism, the rising nationalism, the rising collectivism. You know, read the best essay right now to read. The best essay right now to read. You should all do this. Tonight. Get your copy of Capitalism Not Known Ideal. If you don't have it downloaded from Amazon, put it on your iPad and read it. And read the essay, The Roots of War. Roots of War. I'll be giving a talk about this. I think at University of Bristol in two weeks, two weeks, four weeks, four weeks, four weeks, the University of Bristol. On the causes of war, on the roots of war, I'll be giving a talk on this. They're gonna tape it, it'll be uploaded. And the root of war, fundamental root of war, is collectivism and the ejection of individualism. And that's what's happening in Europe. That's what's happening in the United States. How will it manifest itself in other wars I don't know yet, but this is clearly a war motivated and driven by collectivism. It's all about collectivism. There's no rational basis for this war. It's all about collectivism. Read Eyn Rand's The Roots of War. Rush Me, 20 Canadian Dollars. Thank you for being our voice of reason as Katie Quald. Well, thank you, I appreciate it. On a lighter note, what's your favorite food? Ooh, wow, I don't know. I love food, just food. I don't know, I have so many. I have so many, I don't have one favorite. You know, can you really, it's often the case that it's very difficult. To beat a really good world-class medium rare ribeye steak. I don't know if it's my favorite food, but in some moods that is completely satisfying. I'm a foodie, so I like tons of food. I just ate today, what did I eat today? I was at a restaurant. I ate Reisus Locales, which is this amazing salad of beets with a little bit of yolk, just stunning. The best beets you'll ever have anyway. I had pork belly in a Thai coconut broth. We had two other dishes, but I'm blanking out on them. Anyway, I love my food and I go to good restaurants and I eat all the time. I eat food at good restaurants all the time, all the time. Roots of War is available for free on the airway website. Thank you, Adam, for reminding me of that. Roots of War, Einran's essay, just put Roots of War, Einran and the essay will pop up. Read it tonight. It'll explain so much and it'll explain to you why these national conservatives are so damn dangerous. Giving any talks in Texas this year. I might be doing something in Dallas in April. I don't have anything planned. Nobody's invited me. It's horrible, but nobody's invited me. I'm waiting for invitations, guys. You want me to talk? Invite me. I will talk. I've even got funding sources. Invite me. If you can pay, perfect. If you can't pay, we'll figure it out. Okay, Josh Graff, do you think the U.S. could defeat Russia, China, and North Korea at the same time or defeat any combination of them at once? I mean, look, I don't think North Korea's a player, right? North Korea's insignificant. So it's really you asking about Russia and China. North Korea could be wiped out in a day. It's not a, it doesn't add, and it probably subtracts because it's a diversion for both sides. It doesn't add anything. Could the U.S. defeat China and Russia? Well, it depends. Do you mean in a nuclear war? Yes, but we'd all die. We'd all be wiped out. It's hard to believe that we could do that with such precision and effectiveness that Earth wouldn't take casualties in the billions. So a nuclear war between the United States, Russia, and China, all three of them would result in billions of casualties. Hundreds of millions easily. Conventional war? Yes, I think the United States could defeat them. It would be super expensive. A lot of people would die. A lot of people would die. And it would be very difficult for the United States because it would have to fight a two-front war, one. And it would need, the United States would need, hopefully would have allies too. It wouldn't just be Russia and China or the Europeans, NATO, whatever. But yes, at the end of the day, I think we could because I think we have, I think our industrial capabilities and our technological capabilities are such that I don't think China and Russia can produce precision weaponry anywhere close to speed that we can if we decide we have to and we decide we need to. We fought a two-front war in World War II and we crushed the enemy. And I think we would again today, it would be super expensive in blood and mammon. And of course, at any moment, it could trigger a nuclear war which would wipe out hundreds of millions of people. Seth asks, do you think Putin will retaliate against Kazakhstan in the near future for not supporting him? Yeah, I mean, how the retaliation will come about it'll be interesting to watch. He might not support them next time. There's a potential uprising or he might encourage an uprising. I don't think he's sending troops into any other country anytime soon. Certainly not into Kazakhstan, which would be a problem for him. Not because the Kazakh army is so powerful. It's a big country. It's a desert. It would be very difficult. A little bit like Afghanistan, not quite the same, but a little bit like that. So it would be tricky. But I think he could do something. If you, yeah, I think I've run out of $20 questions. We have lots of lower denomination questions. So let's go through them. Please, no more questions for less than $20 since we've already gone over an hour and a half. So $20, I'll take $50, certainly, but no under $20. Hiram asks, I'm afraid to ask this question, but why does AMP pick up a devout objective is keep encouraging people to rebel against vaccines and advocating unsubstantiated medical treatments like Avimec-Tin? I'm sorry, Hiram, but you're gonna have to ask her. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me. So you're gonna have to ask Amy, not me. Padridge asks, Yuan, how do you think this conflict and the West response will impact China's designs in Taiwan? I've answered it a couple of days ago and answered it earlier in the show. I really don't think, I think Taiwan is a different animal. It's a different animal because Taiwan is better equipped than Ukraine. I think it's a, it has, it's much more technologically advanced than Ukraine is. It has a much better Air Force than Ukraine has. It has all kinds of weapons system that is bought from the United States, from Europe, from Israel, from other countries. It is a difficult island to occupy. It has similar characteristics to Ukraine in terms of an insurgency. It is, it is, again, wealthy and it has the weapons. They've been trained in guerrilla warfare. I just think it's much harder for the Chinese. I mean, look how the Russians are floundering. I think the Chinese were flounder too. Let me make this controversial and somewhat speculative statement. China's weapons systems are not that much better than the Russians. China's army is not that better than the Russian army. China's army is used to winning by brute force. And even then, when China fought a war with Vietnam in the 1980s, I think it was, it basically went to a stalemate. They didn't win outright. So that's one. Militarily, it's not an easy challenge. It's a difficult challenge. It's more difficult than Ukraine. And I think that people in China are less crazy than Putin is, less irrational than Putin is. Two, China has a lot more to lose. Russia is poor getting poorer, much poorer. China doesn't wanna get poor. China's leadership at this point in time, at least now, right now, China's leadership is dedicated to trying to make the Chinese people rich. They don't know what they're doing. They're doing a horrible job at it, particularly in recent years. But that's their focus. The only time that China would invade Taiwan is if they came to the conclusion that they've lost the people in China, that there was gonna be an uprising, that they needed a distraction, that they needed to get the people riled up about something patriotic, that the economy was collapsing and then maybe they would do something. But there's too much to lose. Imagine the sanctions impact on China, which is completely integrated into the world economy through trade. It's much more reliant on trade, I think than even Russia. And it would just be devastating for China to have even these low-level sanctions put on them. And it would destroy the dream of making the people in China relatively rich. Now, what they really want is what one of Freeman calls Hong Kong 2.0. What they really want is to take it over stealthily, quietly, over time, peacefully without a shot being fired like they took over Hong Kong. Now, it's not clear that they can achieve that because Hong Kong wasn't a country and didn't have political leadership. So it's not clear that they can actually achieve that. But I think that's the hope is that they can achieve that. And I think still with China and Taiwan, military action is a last resort because China has so much to lose from such an action. That's my view, so I do not think that China would take advantage of this to do what it's doing right now, right? So I'd be shocked if China invaded Taiwan while this was going on. I think every conclusion they're coming from what's happening in Ukraine right now is don't do it, don't do it. The Russians are much more practiced at war than the Chinese. And if the Chinese are having this heart of a time, again, China throws numbers, through numbers at the Korean War. That was all about numbers. And most of their military, as somebody pointed out, somebody up here pointed out, where anonymous user pointed out, the Chinese military is largely derived in technology that they have basically copied from the Russians. They have some original technology that if you look at their airplanes, if you look at their rifles, it's Russian technology. The Chinese have not been known over the last 150 years as a fighting society, as a warrior society. All right, we got Jeff and Paul who seem to be committed to getting us to $1,000 tonight. This is great, thank you guys. Okay, Jeff, I am a lover of musicals. Your recommendation for our site story was appreciated. I loved it. I love Lemmy's Robles, the greatest show, Showman with Hugh Jackson. Have you watched either of those? Yeah, I mean, they're both fantastic. Lemmy's Robles is probably my favorite of those musicals. And then you'd have to go to old musicals, like the Music Man, I love the Music Man, and the older generation musicals for that. But yes, I'm glad, glad, glad that you enjoyed our site story. Oops, I didn't wanna do that. All right, Paul says, I tried to increase multi-contribution but could not find a mechanism at your website, only a way for new contributors. E-mailed but got no response. I'm sorry you didn't get a response, Paul. I'll talk to Angela about that. But the best way is to cancel your existing contribution and make, and then reinstate yourself at a higher level. So cancel and then do a new one at a higher level. The other option is to just create a second account and do a second monthly contribution that adds, that the two add together to the new amount you wanna do. So those are the ways to increase. Sorry, it's so cumbersome. And I will find out why you didn't get an email response. Jarrett says, another $20. Your Honor, to what extent do you think Putin's actions will force the Europeans to realize that they're more relativism and is incorrect and that they're objective, bad actors in the world? You know, I think, I don't think it'll change Europeans much. I mean, look, all Europeans know that Hitler was a bad guy and many of them even know that Stalin was a bad guy. So they know they're bad guys. But they have to be at that dramatic extreme to be bad. It's the willingness to condemn less bad if you were people. It's the willingness also to see the good as good. And that's the real problem. That's the real essential problem in the West. The West's essential problem is not its tolerance of evil. And this is the issue of justice in Objectivism, right? The essential issue of justice is not about condemning the bad. The essential issue of justice is about appreciating and appreciating and supporting the good. What the West lacks is an appreciation of its own goodness. That's the problem of moral relativism. It's not as much that they don't get that some people are evil. They kind of get that some people are evil. But they don't get the good. They don't get what makes them good. They don't get what's good about them. Indeed, they might conclude from this that what's good about them is they're pacifist or they're not aggressors, which is good, but it's not the essential. So the failure of Western civilization is primarily the negation of good, the rejection of heroes. You see it in our art. The only heroes we have are superheroes. And that's driven by altruism. And I don't know how you escape that. So it's a lot, yeah, that's good, Enric. It's a lack of pride in their own goodness. That's the real driver of kind of the moral relativism and the weakness that that generates. All right, back on top, let's see. Ed asks, are you aware of David Sinclair, professor at Harvard, he is a science of age reversal. He's a professor at Harvard, he's a professor at Harvard. David Sinclair, professor at Harvard, he is a science of age reversal. His book is lifespan. I've downloaded the book. I have not read it yet. I plan to read it. Yeah, I mean, I'm taking seriously this idea of I want to live long. You know, I don't know how long, but I want to be healthy. That's the key. I want to be healthy a long time. So I'm less concerned about age, right, about the when I die. I'm more concerned about making sure that I live well during that period. And I'd like to extend that date further and further into the future. And you guys helped me do that by supporting the show, but by being on the show and supporting the show and stimulating, causing me to stimulate my brains so I don't lose it. So I plan on reading the book. You're on. I think only selected Russian banks are affected by the actions probably, but there are there being a lot of different sanctions. Swift is a major blow to these banks. So don't underestimate the impact of Swift, even though it only affects some of the banks. Russia's going to have a hard time getting money to buy the things they need. You know, the ruble collapsed. The ruble is at its lowest level ever. The Russian stock market collapsed, lost $200 billion in dollars, I think it was dollars, in one day they shut it down. They closed the stock market. So look, somebody did a calculation of how many billions of dollars the oligarchs have lost and it's astronomical numbers. In the meantime, the U.S. stock market is going through the roof, which you know, you should ask yourself why a little dubious, but it's going through the roof. So Russia, as I said, is lost already. Billions, trillions. Putin hasn't collapsed, no, not yet. All right, Dwayne Davies asks, I came for the update on Ukraine thanks to the great update. I might somewhat disagree on Musk. He has a very mixed bag and lies a lot. I know he's a mixed bag, but what a great spirit he has. I'm gonna do a show, somebody's sponsoring for me to do a show on a long mass sense of life. And while I agree with you, Dwayne, that there's a certain mixture and he lies and he gets subsidies and there's a bunch of things that I think are weird about him and are wrong about him, he has the right sense of life. And in a world star with none of that, with no, I mean, I just, you have to admire that. You have to admire that in spite of his obvious flaws and he's a flawed man. Charlie says, have you seen A.Y. Short on Dr. Peacock's prediction Eastern Europe's current state of affairs? No, but I'm not surprised Dr. Peacock predicted it. It's, I mean, he is the master, as we've said often. An honest user says, no way approves 22 million U.S. dollars to Ukraine. Wow, no way to do that. Additional proposal of 112 million U.S. dollars on the table this weekend. That's pretty amazing for Norway, right? And Norway has a border, small border with Russia. Anonymous user, 30 plus countries sending military aid and financial aid. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. Again, Putin has lost, no matter how you cut this, no matter how you slice it. And, you know, and Putin's losing. I mean, if Poland doesn't invade, if the end game that Putin fears is Ukrainian integration into Europe, Russia is better off, dramatically better off with Ukraine integrating into Europe than the consequence of this war. So, I mean, why is Ukraine integrating in Europe bad for Russia? It's not, it's good for Russia. But for that, you have to understand that trade is win-win, that other people's wealth creation is a plus for you. You have to understand that Europe, at least as constituted today, is not an aggressor. You have to understand a lot of things about the world to understand that a flourishing Europe, a flourishing Ukraine is not a threat to you. It's the opposite. Wouldn't control of Taiwan give the new regime control of TSMC, CHIPFAB, and if on upper hand on the mitigating economic impact sanctions, CHIP shortage is already a problem. Yeah, but the United States can build the TSMC plant in the United States. It would be expensive and it would be hard, but they can do it. You know, we can survive without China. Can China survive without us? I don't think so. Taiwan is, you know, there are CHIP manufacturers in Thailand, CHIP factories in Thailand. The CHIP factories, I don't know if they are Vietnam or not, but they're certainly on Thailand. I know that. Japan could invest in CHIPs. I mean, these could be done very quickly. Again, wartime industrialization is, Americans are phenomenal at this. So I don't worry about stuff like that. And, you know, would they control the plant or would the plant be even existent? Would a war with Taiwan, what would exist after they were there? Would the Taiwanese be willing to work for the Chinese? A lot of questions would, you know, and I think the Americans would start buying CHIPs from Taiwan. And we'd just figure out how to manage with fewer CHIPs. And we'd manage to build maybe CHIP facilities in Mexico, maybe CHIP facilities in Colombia, you know, maybe CHIP facilities in Europe. You could do that. And you could do it fast. If you were at war and you're willing to dedicate the resources to it. Michael asked, how was Israel able to defeat all those Arab armies despite being extraordinary outnumbered? Can Ukraine copy the Israeli method or are the Russians more sophisticated than Arabs? I think the Russians are probably moderately better fighters than the Arabs and more sophisticated, but they're not particularly motivated and the Arabs were not particularly motivated. Israel just deployed better strategy, better tactics. It had superior weapon systems. I've told you over and over and over again, nobody seems to believe me. But Russian weapons systems suck. Israel always fought with the European weapons systems and then later with American weapons systems. And motivation, Israel was defending their lives, their property, their families, their freedom. The Arabs would, what did they, you know, wasn't they war? So the real issue is motivation and superior weaponry. And even the French mirages were better than the MiGs in 1967. And that's what Israel flew. And even in the 70s, Israel was still flying some mirages even though most airplanes were now, you know, Phantom F, what are they, F-4s, Phantom planes. And they're just no contest. Even now, in Syria, the Russians won't deploy their most sophisticated weapons because they're afraid that Israelis will knock them out and then the rest of the world will see how pathetically useless they really are. Not a single Israeli plane has been knocked out of the air over Syria in spite of the fact that the Russians are there. Look, China has a massive consumer base, but China that's not free and China's moving away from freedom, cannot, cannot grow and produce and satisfy all of what its own consumers want. And the fact that its consumers want to be, and its poor people want to become middle class, it cannot do that if it's cut off from world trade. And it might not even be able to do it even with world trade given that it's becoming more and more authoritarian. Authoritarianism is a bad economic strategy. Bad economic strategy. Nothing else matters. If you're gonna be authoritarian, I mean, really bad authoritarian, economically authoritarian, you're not gonna do well economically. Ben Jackson, you're on, how much do you charge to do a movie review? $500. Yeah, I mean, I watch God, I'd love to watch it again. Let me know if you'd like me to do it. $500 for a movie review. China's not free, but China's had relatively, relative economic freedom for about 30 years. From 1978 through 2012, 13, China had ever increasing economic freedom in China. That has been reversed in the last few years. And as that gets worse and worse, the economy in China will get worse and worse as well. What are your thoughts on Thomas Sowell? I mean, Thomas Sowell's an excellent economist, a great thinker, one of the best public intellectuals in the world today. Fraud because of his commitment to religion, because of his commitment to certain conservative premises. But really good, given all that. Critical thinker, what kind of infographics is required to make you up understand its overwhelming military superiority over Russia? Too many people seem to project Russia's geographic size onto its military power. I don't know, I mean, I've never thought, because again, I've been involved in fighting against Russian equipment and being involved in analyzing Russian equipment. When I was in the Israeli military a little bit, I've never thought that Russia was a military power. Look what happened in Afghanistan. It's not a military power, it's not a force. And I don't know what it would take. It seems obvious to me. I think most Israelis would agree with that. Israelis who fought against Russian weapons, weapon systems, particularly those who've analyzed or thought about it. Frank asks, can Putin and his army be declared international terrorists with a bounty of one million placed for his capture and arrest? Anyone can claim, I don't know, nobody's gonna ever do that. Politicians are afraid to treat other politicians that way. Michael asks, on Thursday show you said you would be okay eating a turtle. Could you eat a dog? God, you guys really, I probably wouldn't eat a dog. Maybe I would taste it once. I've tasted a horse. So in France, horse meat is considered a delicacy. But I actually ate horse in Mongolia. Mongolia, they eat a lot of horse. So I ate a horse, didn't particularly like it, but it was fine. But so I guess I would maybe taste it, but it wouldn't be part of my diet. No. And no, I mean, a turtle, haven't you ever eaten turtle soup in a French restaurant? Yeah, turtle snails. I've eaten ants, eaten ants in Brazil. And I ate ants at a restaurant in Orange County. They served ants once. The ants in Orange County were not that good. Yeah, I mean, there's certain things I won't eat. I'm not into eating live things. Not eating, I couldn't eat things that are crunchy. And anyway, let's not go there because it's too disgusting. But my palate is pretty broad, for whatever that's worth. Should we kick Russia out of Swift? Yes, sanction oil, yes. Free trade asks, I've seen a lot of unexploded Russian audiences, missiles and rockers on YouTube. Probably it was out to put technological reliability, real technological innovation or twice capitalism. Yeah, yeah. I don't know and be careful again of what you, videos on YouTube, videos on Twitter, what's real and what's real, what's old, what's actual, what's framed, it's hard to tell. Again, remember, fog of war, really hard to tell what's going on in the battlefield. A lot of stuff is so-so. I mean, ants, a bit of, it depends on the seasoning, right? Depends how you season the ants. The ants at the restaurant in OC, it was a Mexican restaurant, were very spicy, very spicy. All right, we had again a lot of live watches. Thank you, don't forget to like the show. If you're not a subscriber, I'd really appreciate you consider subscribing, so please click the subscribe button. Also, you might wanna join and become a member of the Iran Book Show. There'll be all kinds of books associated with that and videos, exclusive videos for it. But for now, like and subscribe would be fantastic, given we have 270 people watching live right now and we went over 300 at some point. And then finally, if you like what you see here, if you'd like to support what I do, if you'd like to support the show, like to support my efforts, then please support the show. You can do that at youronbookshow.com slash support. You can do it on Patreon. You could do it subscribe, subscribe, subscribe style. And that would be great. Thanks everybody. Okay, tomorrow, 2 p.m. East Coast time. We have Ask Iran Anything. Ask me anything in AMA. We'll have some of my supporters on Zoom and we'll have an AMA and you'll ask me whatever you want and we'll just hang out and we'll have a good time. Join us, I'm sure a lot of the questions will be about Ukraine. I'm sure I'll have an update for you. But join us tomorrow and it'll be a lot of fun. So two o'clock, same place. Two o'clock, same place. Video's already up on YouTube. Talk to you soon. Bye, people.