 the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this November 3rd. It's already Friday. Hope everybody's had a fantastic weekend, week, and you are looking forward to the weekend. My podcasting app here is struggling to connect, and I'm trying to see what the hell is going on. All right. It looks like we're on live. All right. So, welcome, everybody. Let me put on video. We want the video, right? There we go. All right. You want to see me? Thanks, everybody, for joining me. It just keeps the news just keeps flowing in from the Middle East. And, of course, a bunch of stuff is coming in the United States. And it's a real challenge to keep up with everything. But you've got me. You've got me doing the news roundups every day to keep you updated on what's happening in the world. All right. So, first up, a quick update on what's happening on the ground in Israel, and then we'll go into some details on a few of the different aspects of the war. Israel, as we talked about yesterday, is basically surrounded Gaza City, which is where most of the Palestinians in the north, northern Gaza strip live. They have come in from the north, they've come in from the south, they've split, basically disconnected the north part of Gaza from the south part of Gaza. And they are slowly starting to enter Gaza City and in the various towns and camps surrounding Gaza City, the goal is to go in and dismantle and destroy the tunnel infrastructure that Hamas has built. They kill as many Hamas members as possible and destroy any ammunition they have, and hopefully find some hostages and free them, if that is at all possible. My understanding is that they are going to try to avoid going into the tunnels themselves. Going into tunnels could be suicidal. My guess is they might send special forces in there to try to get intelligence and to try to release hostages. But generally, I think the goal is going to be to either smoke the Hamas out, that is fill the tunnels with smoke and force them out, or to basically destroy the tunnels, to have them cause them to cave in, to block the exits, and to create a situation where people, you know, the Hamas are trapped inside, die inside, or are forced out and therefore into the open and are killed outside. The challenge, of course, is that at least in Gaza City, in the south part of Gaza City, so close to where the Israeli troops are already there, there are two hospitals. And the challenge is that the Hamas has built much of their infrastructure, the command posts, underneath these hospitals. So a lot of the tunnels, the hubs underneath these hospitals, Israel has constantly asked for these hospitals to be evacuated. The Palestinians refused. The hospitals are still functioning. But Israel cannot destroy the tunnels underneath them. It cannot destroy the facilities underneath them without destroying the hospitals above, or without risking munitions exploding underneath the hospital and imploding the whole hospital. And then Israel gets to blame. So Israel has a real quandary in terms of what to do and how to do it. And for now, what it looks like they're doing is the bombing everything around the hospital. They're basically destroying the buildings surrounding the hospital, partially I think to give them a warning to tell them what's going to happen to them unless they evacuate. So that's going on right now. You've got massive shelling of the buildings and infrastructure around the two hospitals. But the flattening of those buildings will also potentially give Israel access to the tunnels without actually going through the hospital. But it's still true that you know, any one of those tunnels could implode and explode and take down a hospital with it. And that's the purpose. That's how Hamas fights. It fights, you know, by jeopardizing and sacrificing its own people by putting its own people in the line of fire, by creating a circumstance where for Israel to win, it must kill many civilians. That is the Hamas strategy. The Hamas strategy is not to win. Hamas strategy is to force the hand of the Americans and the Europeans to start raining in Israel, to force Israel to have a ceasefire, to force Israel to retreat. Hamas can't kick Israel out of Gaza. But America could put the squeeze on Israel and force them out of Gaza. And that's what Hamas is counting on. And for that, Hamas needs as many civilians and to die, as many hospitals to be blown up, as many good, you know, TikTok videos to be available to show how horrible life is in Gaza and how evil Israel is actually. And that brings me to TikTok. TikTok, of course, is the platform of short videos that young people, your kids are obsessed with. TikTok is a platform of very short videos that dominates social media for young people ages 18 to 24. But what's fascinating about it is that it is dominated by Pro Hamas anti-Israel hashtags. So somebody did an analysis and they found that if you look at Free Palestine, Free Palestine got, let me see, this is number of views, 446,600,000 views on the hashtag Free Palestine over the last 30 days. At the same time over the last 30 days, Stand with Israel, the hashtag Stand with Israel got 16,400,000. So 30 times more for Free Palestine. Now, that's just one stab. But overall, the TikTok has dominated by anti-Israeli, Pro Hamas videos, whatever else you do in TikTok, I guess it's videos. And it's not surprising that in poll after poll, when you poll 18 to 24-year-olds, they all think that Israel is the villain here. Well, to a large extent they think Israel is a villain here because that's all they see. All they see is videos and TikToks and reinforced through the algorithm of TikTok, reinforce the negative message. Another one, for example, between October 23rd and 30th, Stand with Palestine got 285 million views and 87,000 posts. Stand with Israel got 64 million views, a quarter, and only 9,000 posts, one tenth, one tenth. And this is of course being ramped up because if you look at data from earlier in October, Stand with Palestine got nothing. Stand with Israel got nothing in comparison. So the propaganda on TikTok has ramped up dramatically. And it's interesting. It's easy to blame the Chinese and I have nothing against blaming the Chinese for this. But it is interesting that this platform is, in one way or another, linked to the Chinese Communist Party. It is Chinese-dominated and one wonders if, given the Chinese incentive to create what? To create angst among Americans, to create a split between Israelis and Americans, to create a split within American culture, to create angst and uncertainty and waveries and tribalism and everything. Could it be that the Chinese have, or the Chinese company tweaked the algorithm to emphasize the Hamas videos, the pro-Hamas videos? 10x more videos pro-Hamas than pro-Israel. 10x. And let's just be clear. This is just in America. I think, I mean, they're more Jews in America than they are Arabs or Muslims. So it's not sheer numbers. These are Americans. These are white kids. These are just regular Americans, both uploading pro-Hamas videos and sharing pro-Hamas videos. And those are the videos that go viral. But whether this is a thought out campaign by the Chinese, hard to tell. Hard to tell. So anyway, TikTok is on the side of Hamas. TikTok is reinforcing all the talking points of Hamas to your kids. These are numbers for 18 to 24 year olds. But it's not just TikTok. The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris. In this time of great challenge for Israel and at a time of horror for really Jewish people, primarily Jews on campuses who are being harassed and beaten, being chased and experiencing what it is like to be in a hostile environment. During this period, Kamala has your back. Don't worry. She is launching the country's first national strategy to counter Islamophobia. Because the real problem in America right now, as we speak, the real problem in America is fear of Muslims. We're all terrified of Muslims and that results in really, really harsh behavior towards Muslims. You'd think that after October 7th, Islamophobia would be a term relegated to the dustbin of history. Because don't you think that after October 7th, we should be afraid of Muslims? Didn't October 7th actually show that Islamists, radical Islamists, well Islamists, radical Muslims, alive and well and they want to kill you and they will kill you. They have no qualms about killing you, raping you, beheading you, burning you, chopping up your children. I mean, if you're not a little afraid of Muslims right now, there's something wrong with you and you would think that in the aftermath of October 7th, Muslims in this country would be what? Muslims in this country would be ashamed, embarrassed, maybe come out in support of peace, maybe condemn and denounce Hamas and everything Hamas stands for. Maybe they would come out for, I don't know, moderate Islam in opposition to the Islamist jihadist agenda. You would think, just like you would think they would have done that after 9-11 and the reality is they didn't then and they're not now. They're silent or worse. They're marching in the streets supporting Hamas. They're marching in the streets supporting the slaughter of children, the rape, the barbarism that we saw from Hamas. They're embracing it. Should we be afraid of Muslims? Yes. There is no such thing as the Islamophobia which is just a smear term. There is such a thing as fear. There is such a thing as looking at the Muslim world and evaluating it. There is such a thing as condemning Islamic fundamentalism, Islamism jihadism, Islamic totalitarianism, call it what you will. And you know, the vice president of the United States of America in her wisdom and this is obviously coming from Biden and coming from the strategy of the administration, they're losing Arab Muslim votes. They're worried that they'll lose that vote, two million or something. I guess they don't worry about the Jewish vote. That's there as Jews will just vote Democratic no matter what. They think at least. Maybe they're right particularly if Trump wins, we'll see. But they think this is a good time to launch a national strategy to counter Islamophobia. I mean, I have a good idea of how to counter Islamophobia, flatten Hamas, destroy Hezbollah, eliminate the regime in Iran, crush whatever remnants they are of ISIS and Al Qaeda, whatever they may be and come home. Then we can all stop worrying about Muslims or at least worry a lot less, fear them a lot less because we will have won. Problem in the world today is not fear of Muslims. It's a so-called bogus concept of Islamophobia. The problem in the world today is that we embolden these radicals. We embolden these crazy Islamists. We embolden these suicidal homicidal maniacs. We embolden them by our weakness. We embolden them by not being willing to name them, by not being willing to define Hamas as an Islamic organization, Hezbollah as an Islamic organization and Iran as an Islamist state and viewing them as our enemy. That is the challenge of our time. That has been the challenge of our time for decades and one more administration has failed in doing what was necessary added to a long list going back probably to Ronald Reagan. At the same time, the president of Columbia University is very, very worried about the students. She's worried about students, not about Jewish students at Columbia that are fearing for their life, not about Jewish students in Columbia who are being harassed, marginalized and attacked. No, no. She's worried about Arab Muslim and Palestinian students who are being named, who are being identified for their pro Hamas, pro violence, pro genocidal views. Here's what she writes. President of Columbia University. If you send your kid to Columbia University, take them out. If you write a check to Columbia University, stop. She writes, the deliberate harassment and targeting of members of our community by doxing. A dangerous form of intimidation is unacceptable. Doxing here means naming names. You said pro Hamas. What are you embarrassed by? What are you afraid of? Why shouldn't your name be out there? Why do you hide behind a pseudo name? I don't. Why do you hide behind a mask? She writes, many individuals including students across several schools have been subject to these attacks by third parties. Well, they've lost their jobs. Some of them good for the law firms who've insisted on not hiring genocidal maniacs. You'd think that most companies in the U.S. wouldn't want to hire them if they knew. But no, Columbia University wants to hide their identity so that they can be hired in spite of their homocidal views. This includes disturbing incidents in which trucks of so-called the Columbia campus displaying and publicizing the names and photos of Arab Muslim and Palestinian students. We are grateful, grateful for the persistence and perseverance of the students and their families in the face of this harassment. We are assembling available resources to support them and the staff and faculty who are by their side to streamline support for the members of our community who are targets of doxing. Columbia and Bernard together are establishing a doxing resource group composed of key offices across both campuses and are focused on the issue. This group will serve as a centralized point of contact on issues related doxing, harassment, and online security. Tell the Jewish students, I don't know if you saw the video of the Columbia Jewish Columbia student basically crying into the microphone about how she's, how, how fearful she is to be on the Columbia campus these days. Our Vice President, the President of Columbia University, all very, very concerned about Muslims in America. The Jews, not so much. All right, there's a good point to let you know, one, this show is sponsored by the Einren Institute and by VPN Express. If you want three extra months of free VPN Express, you can go to VPNexpress.com slash Iran. Einren Institute is, you should go to einren.org slash start here. Right now they're accepting scholarship applications for the Einren Conference in Amsterdam in March. Hopefully you guys can come. Those of you who are interested in scholarship applications go to einren.org start here. I'll be speaking there, Anka will be speaking there, and others. It should be an exceptional event. And again, scholarships pay for travel expenses and room and board and everything, so room at least. So hopefully you can make it, you can make it out there. Also, I wanted to let you know, I'm going to be adding a couple of shows. So tomorrow we've got our Ask Me Anything with, and a panel of those of you who want to ask questions live of a video. So please join us tomorrow with a bunch of questions about anything, anything in the world challenge me. I know some of you don't agree with me. Come and ask tough questions. Sunday night and Monday night, I will be doing basically a series on the left the Sunday night show will be the left and Hamas. And it will be what is it about Hamas that appeals to the left? And we'll talk about kind of the displays of support for Hamas anywhere from the red hands. And I'll describe what that is and explain what it is to the from the river to the sea to to the queers for Palestine. What explains what explains the queers for Palestine given the attitude of Palestinians, particularly Hamas towards gays and queers and so on. So so that will be on Sunday night, 8 p.m. East Coast time. Well, no, it will be 7 p.m. East Coast time. Sorry, the time change is going to make it one hour earlier because Puerto Rico stays at the same time. So it'll be 8 p.m. Puerto Rican times 7 p.m. East Coast time. And then on Monday, 7 p.m. East Coast time, I'll be doing a show on the left and anti Semitism. What, you know, why the left is so anti Semitic? What are the issues causing the left to be as anti Semitic as it is? What is it about leftist modern leftist theory that has caused this explosion in anti Semitism and makes them so susceptible and ripe and and and you know, aggressive about the anti Semitism. So so one is left in Hamas. The second one is left in anti Semitism. Hope you join me 7 p.m. on Sunday and 7 p.m. on Monday. And then, of course, tomorrow Saturday, 3 p.m. There will be the regular AM a show and on Monday morning, there'll be a news roundup. All right, let's see. Hizballah Nazwala, the leader of Hizballah, the leader of Hizballah who should not be alive, who should have been killed a long time ago, gave a big speech today, highly anticipated speech today. Tens of thousands of people stood outside to watch the speech. I think it was on video. I don't think he was there live. He's afraid for his life as he should be. And you know, this was highly anticipated because he hasn't really given a speech since October 7th. And the question was, is Hizballah going to join the war? Is Hizballah going to support Hamas? What's going on? The foreign minister of Iran has been in Lebanon recently to talk to Nazwala. So the question is, what is Iran and Hizballah? What are the plans? And the speech, I think, was a big disappointment to a lot of people in the Middle East because Nazwala did not indeed declare war on Israel. He did not announce that he was joining Hamas. He did not announce that they were going to use the 140,000 missiles to attack Israel. He basically, you know, claimed first that Hamas acted alone, that Hizballah and Iran were not involved in spite of evidence to the country, that they had no say, that they did not green light it, that they did not participate. He also emphasized that this was basically Hamas' war, that he completely supports them, and they are just and Israel must be eliminated. And then, you know, he basically claimed that Hizballah has been fighting in Israel since October 8th on the northern front and distracting them from Gaza. And it's why things are going so slow in Gaza. It's because of the Hizballah, even though the Hizballah has just been doing kind of pinpricks, they certainly haven't engaged in full-blown war. And he basically didn't indicate at all that they were going to engage in full-blown war. He kind of suggested and threatened that if things got worse, they would if there was no ceasefire. They would be easily threatening all month since October 7th, and nothing has come of it. So it was a really, really, really interesting talk because basically what it represented was, Hizballah and Iran basically saying, we probably don't want to get involved here. Not now. We're afraid. You know, we don't want the Americans to get involved. We don't want the Israelis actually to come after Hizballah. And I think really, really important is to realize here that the Lebanese don't want Hizballah involved. Basically, a powerful Lebanese politician, head of the Christian militias in Lebanon basically said the other day, if Hizballah gets involved, you know, Hizballah is therefore a destructor power in Lebanon, and we will oppose Hizballah throughout. So Hizballah is, you know, the Lebanese economy is basically doesn't exist. Lebanon is in grave, grave economic danger. Political collapse, economic collapse, they're very close to that. They cannot afford a war with Israel. Hizballah will lose whatever political power it has in Lebanon. Iran, Iran is not doing well economically. I mean, it's doing okay because it gets to sell its oil at these exaggeratedly high prices. But it's not overall doing well economically. And there's a lot of angst inside Iran. They're not, I don't think they really want a full-fledged war with the United States. They want to pink forget. They want to tell the world, the Hamas, and their own people, oh, we're fighting on Hamas's side. They want to kill some Americans, and they know America will not respond really in any kind of significant ways. They'll do anything they can to attack America and Israel without having Israel or America respond fully. I mean, this is a coward speech, a speech by somebody who's very afraid, a speech with somebody who, in spite of the fact that they have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of troops, and many of them well-trained because they've been fighting in Syria for very long, for many years. And as I said, somewhere between 100,000 missiles targeted at Israel and weapons from the Iranians, in spite of all of that, they're not ready to engage. They're not ready to actually go for it. So, you know, Scott is somewhat exhibiting his ignorance again. Lebanon's been teaching me for 40 years, not really economically. Lebanon's done okay. But over the last two, three years, I talked about this. Do you remember that explosion in the ports and elsewhere, and the political crisis? Lebanon is really in a state that it's never been before, even during the Civil War in the 70s. It was in a better state than it is right now. And Hezbollah's position is probably never being weaker than it is right now, since it became a powerful political force in the late 80s and since then. It's never been politically weaker probably than it is right now. And a war with Israel would be a disaster for Hezbollah, and I think they know it. So, interesting, interesting that everybody's been expecting, everybody's been fearful, everybody's been expecting Hezbollah and Iran to join in. I think they got threatened by the U.S. and Israel. I think the Saudis probably told them stop it, and they decided to walk away. So they'll continue to lob some missiles here and there, they'll continue to take casualties. Many, many Hezbollah fighters, I think about 60 Hezbollah fighters have already been killed by the Israelis. Many more will be killed, but they're not going to go out for all-out battle. They're not going to get to the point where Israel feels like it needs to bomb Beirut. As long as this stays local in southern Lebanon and doesn't expand and is mitigated, a bomb here, a bomb there, then they're fine, but in all-out war with Israel, they do not want. Now I've advocated from the beginning of this a preemptive strike on Hezbollah, the destruction of Hezbollah. I think that's necessary. I think if not now, when? And I think Hezbollah is worried about that, and he wants to not give Israel the excuse to take him out. I think he fears that maybe this time Israel will take him out, not just his troops in southern Lebanon. And there is, I guess, some risk of that. All right, so the speech, significant speech, but really very little progress. All right, the Americans are starting to get more aggressive with regard to their appeasement. The United States is an appeasing power. It uses its supports for countries like Israel to get them to appease the enemy. Even more so than, let's say, with Ukraine. You know, America demands Israel appease. And really the reason is that Israel is strong, the Palestinians are weak, whereas in Ukraine, Ukrainians are weak, Russia is strong. So the morality, the morality of our political class, the morality of young people in America, the morality of the Democratic Party necessitates that ultimately they come out on the side of the underdog, they come out on the side of the weak. And that means they come out on the side of the Palestinians. Blinken, Secretary of State Blinken, has been in Israel. There's only one reason he would come to Israel at this point, and that is to argue for an immediate ceasefire, for more aid, for more civilian protection. As I've said, the longer this lasts, the more difficult it is for Israel to stand up to the Americans. They need to keep pushing. They need to keep pushing fast. They need to start acting faster. And, you know, they're finally into a ground operation, but this ground operation could last months. Let's hope that they push it faster. We now have technical terms for a pause versus a ceasefire. But let's hope no pause, no ceasefire. Israel needs to just grind ahead. So far, Israel has resisted the cause from the U.S. So far, Israel has insisted that any kind of pause will only occur if hostages are released. And it's unlikely that Hamas is going to release any hostages right now. They're going to use them as cards as long as they can. So Biden is capitulating. Blinken is, every time he comes to Israel, don't view it as a show of support, view it as American pressure on Israel to stop, American pressure on Israel to compromise, to appease, to settle, to create a ceasefire, to, you know, not to live up to its promises of destroying and dismantling Hamas. I still think the Americans will win on this one and Israel will fail. I hope I'm wrong. I really, really hope I'm wrong. But it is very much possible that Blinken and Biden will put the right kind of pressure on Netanyahu to fold. I think Netanyahu would have folded by now if not for some of the other people in the war cabinet who are, I think, better and more principled than he is. Okay, House of Representatives passed an aid packet for Israel, $14 billion of aid to Israel. They offset it by IRS funding cuts. This is not going to be successful in the Senate. The Senate is going to vote this down. Even if it gets voted in the Senate, the Biden will veto it. So this is a non-starter and always has been a non-starter. The Biden administration is insisting because of a Republican opposition. They're insisting on Israel aid being tied to Ukrainian aid being tied to, I think, for Taiwan as well. So a whole package of support for our allies. House of Republicans don't want to vote on aid for Ukraine. They won't even bring it to the House floor because they know it will pass if they bring it to the House floor. But the anti-Ukraine faction within the Republicans refused to bring it to the floor. And therefore, they want to make sure they want to support Israel kind of, but they want to make sure we don't support Ukraine. And to that end, they will do whatever they can, ultimately, all the way to not supporting Israel. We'll see how it all develops. But cutting IRS funding is great. That's wonderful. I wish the Republicans would actually propose something like cutting government spending properly. I mean, this is penny change and do this properly and have a whole plan for reducing government spending rather than these little symbolic PR marketing efforts that don't have any real teeth and don't have any real meaning. So aid to Israel held up because Democrats won't vote for it unless it's combined with aid elsewhere and Republicans won't bring it to the floor because the current speaker of the House is a pro-Russia anti-Ukrainian theocrat. All right. All right, quickly. Pakistan. You might have heard about this, but Pakistan has decided about a month ago that it is going to expel all undocumented foreigners from Pakistan. Might sound familiar to some of you. So they are going to send all of them. You know, packing, including 1.7 million Afghans. So they are 1.7 million Afghans in Pakistan. The reason for this is, this also might sound familiar to you, they take our jobs, they are involved in crime, and they are potential terrorists. Anyway, since they made this announcement, already 200,000 Afghan nationals have left over the last two months, but now efforts are to get rid of the other 1.7 million. They are bulldozing their homes and they will start deportation in the weeks and in the days, weeks and months to come. About 600,000 Afghans escaped the Taliban when the Taliban took over in 2021. Many of those are sitting in Pakistan waiting for their visa to come to the United States, because these are people who helped the U.S., were translators and others, and the U.S. promised them to be able to move to the U.S., but of course U.S. bureaucracy, particularly when it comes to immigration, is unbelievably slow. So here we have Pakistanis deporting Afghans, almost no coverage of this in the world media. Muslims deporting other Muslims doesn't make the news. So, you know, see how this develops. I mean, I feel sorry for the Afghans living in Pakistan, first because they have to live in Pakistan, and second, because now they're going to have to be forced to go to a place worse than Pakistan, which is Taliban-run Afghanistan. You can imagine the girls and the women who fled and now won't be allowed to go to school or be harassed, we treated like property in Taliban-run Afghanistan. Of course, we can thank the Trump administration and the Biden administration for turning the Afghanistan over to the Taliban and negating the efforts of tens of thousands of American troops, including 2,000 who died there and many thousands who got injured there, and basically Trump and Biden combined to completely surrender the United States to the Taliban and leave Afghanistan for them to rule. They were the enemy we were supposed to depose after 9-11, and yet there they are. Now they get another 1.7 million people to abuse. Many of these Afghans are trying to make it to Europe or trying to make it to the U.S., but it's almost impossible to get into these countries. Okay, finally, we talked a lot about this when it happened when FTX collapsed. Well, Sam Bankman Fried, SBF, who was tried for fraud this morning, I guess he was found guilty. The jury did not take a long time to make this decision. They were pretty conclusive on all seven counts of fraud. He was found guilty of seven counts of fraud. He is going to spend some real, real time in jail. His parents were there, of course, his parents were at least to some extent complicit with this. Now, I don't know the exact detail, but it certainly does, from everything I've read about what happened at FTX. It really does sound like fraud was indeed committed. I think the really damaging testimony against SBF was from his co-workers who had cut deals with the governments, but also his own testimony. Basically, he continues to have this arrogant he is above the law, above reality, above facts kind of mentality. And when it comes to finance, I never trust the prosecutors, but here clearly fraud was committed, or at least to my best understanding, fraud was committed, and he is going to spend real time in jail as a consequence. I don't think this verdict is a surprise. Maybe the surprise is how quickly they came to the decision. And then the challenge now is going to be how this impacts the rest of the crypto world. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe the crypto world has gotten over SBF and it won't have an impact on them. All right, that is what I had. So we'll go now to your questions. I'll just mention we're $43 short of our goal. We don't want to make these goals. This is how we fund these shows. We've got 131 people watching right now. Maybe you can do a super chat or you can do a sticker to show your support, particularly if you've never if you've never really contributed to the show. And yet you obviously listen and get some value from it. Also, let me remind people, because there are a lot of people lately who've been watching the show who are not subscribers. So please subscribe. Subscribe, you'll get notification on when the show goes live. And it'd be great to have you as subscribers. Also, you can join as members. And I haven't done a member show in a while, but I will do one in November, a special member show. And you get special that only members are invited to and only members can see. So please consider becoming a member. And you can also consider becoming a monthly supporter on one of the other platforms, Patreon, subscribe star, and PayPal through your on bookshow.com slash support. Monthly contributors are fantastic because they're predictable. So please consider supporting the show, liking the show. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We should have a lot more likes than we do right now, given how many people are on and using the super chat, sharing, liking, doing the stuff that you do, commenting, all the stuff that you do. But liking is the easiest. Just press a button. Do you not committing to anything? But please subscribe if you can. That would be great. I'd like to see those subscriptions rise. Got a lot of views over the last month. And good subscription additions, but not quite at the rate we need to have them. All right, let's go to Richard $100. Thank you, Richard. Really appreciate that. Let's see. I am so depressed about the attacks and the reaction to us. Yeah, me too. I am having a hard time staying positive while trying to keep up with the news. I'm going to go back and listen to the rules for life. Good idea. And stop listening to news. Just listen to your own book show. There's no need to listen to news. You won't gain any value. It'll only depress you. And yeah, it's just depressing. And there's nothing you can do about it. So you come to your own book show, you get my moral outrage which I think helps you guys deal with the situation. At least you know that I'm pissed off as well. And let's see. What else did I want to say? Yeah, I mean, just keep it going. Savanos, thank you. Savanos just did $50 for and got us over the target. He says, I didn't make it to your show last night, but I'm looking forward to listening to it. Here's to my favorite news. So yeah, let me just say, with the God of Yesterday show, fascinating show. I thought it was excellent. I think you'll really enjoy it. So I hope you go back and listen to it. Those of you haven't yet. It was Scott McDonald on China. Really thoughtful, really deep, really good analysis. And yeah, I'll have Scott on to talk about China. It's going to be a big issue forever. But I thought we really had a good conversation. I think you'll learn enough a lot from it. I encourage you to go and go and watch it. So yeah, thank you, Savanos. Really appreciate it. Let's see. Shazmat, when will America stop consuming high fructose, corn syrup, and espotane? I think when the government bans it. When the government nudges us. I mean, high fructose corn syrup will never, will never stop consuming it. Because as long as we subsidize corn farmers, as long as corn farmers have a huge political lobby and political influence on both Republican and Democratic party, as long as Iowa is a key, has the first kind of choice in the election primaries, you will continue to consume high fructose corn syrup because it's the corn farmers in Ohio, in Iowa, that insist that that never go away. That's how they make their money. But you know, that and ethanol, right? Bob Dole, remember Bob Dole, the senator presidential candidate, used to be called ethanol president, ethanol senator. Yeah, I mean, there's a massive farm lobby in this country. There's going to be a farm bill passed. The one thing the House of Representative and the Senate will do indeed is pass a farm bill because farmers are incredibly influential, incredibly powerful lobby, and they will get their way and we will continue to subsidize farm. Now also, don't forget the other reason we consume high fructose corn syrup, and that is because we basically have very high tariffs on sugar. And that is something Marco Rubio and the rest of the Florida delegation is very proud of. They have protected the sugar industry in Florida by having high tariffs, keeping the price of sugar very, very high. And by doing that, forcing consumer products companies to use the cheap, subsidized high fructose corn syrup. So the government subsidized corn. And in a sense, tax is sugar. Guess what you get? More corn syrup, less sugar, what you tax you get less of, what you subsidize you get more of. All right. Fizzled, are the Gaza civilians truly innocent given the video showing them celebrating after 9 11 attacks, London subway bombing and beating and spitting on the dead girl in the back of that pickup? No, I think most adults in Gaza are not innocent. Most adult in Gaza support Hamas. Most adults in Gaza, many adults in Gaza have chosen not to leave Gaza. Some of them could have. Most adults in Gaza have not chosen to rise up against Hamas. So no, I don't consider most adults in Gaza innocent, but a two year old child is innocent. Now, you know, a two year old child is completely dependent on decisions made by his parents and suffers the consequences. So, but they are innocent. You can't say they're no innocence, but you have to say the blood of that child is on his parents. They made the choice to support Hamas. They made the choice to go out into the streets and celebrate. They made the choice not to try rise up against Hamas. And sadly, the children are the ones to suffer for the choices that they make. But those are choices that make them non innocent. Mark says, press the button, sending dollars. Thank you. I have an AI question. Do you think AI can develop and be used to provide central planners to successfully run a country by using AI technology? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't. The argument about central planning is not an argument about the lack of data. It's not an argument about the lack of computing power. It's not an argument about the lack of ability. It's a lack of the ability of somebody else to make choices about your values. Only you. Yeah, and I pencil doesn't do it. I pencil doesn't address this issue. The fundamental issue is that your values are yours to be chosen. And no AI can predict what your values are going to be. No AI can make choices for you. You have to make choices and you reflect those choices in your supply and your demand in the way you behave in the marketplace. And that is not predictable because we are humans with free will. And any attempt to predict it is bound to fail, but it's also necessitates what acting on that prediction necessitates use of force against us. So look, there's no question they're going to be attempts to use AI at central planning and that AI would be better at central planning than human beings. But central planning, if we want innovation and economic growth and freedom is impossible without because they cannot, they cannot replace the fact that values values for whom and for what for whom the AI has no values. So what are your values? And my values might be different than yours, particularly in the marketplace. So it's impossible. It's impossible to have AI run an economy and Richard, another one, we've got a few real, you know, how could I say idiots on this chat? He says, mass consumer preferences are known to five decimal places. Yeah, that's right. So everybody knew that consumers would want an iPhone. Everybody. It was completely normal. Bullshit. Technically, I think that's the term. You know, nobody knows what consumer preferences are going to be, particularly not if you're talking about innovation, particularly not if you're talking about disruptive technologies, particularly not if things change, people's values change. Yeah. Okay. We know to the fifth decimal point, consumer preferences with regard to toilet paper, wibby in the absence of those Japanese toilets that reduce the consumption of toilet paper dramatically. And maybe one day would be adopted by Americans. The whole point is only individuals know what they will demand. Only producers know what they're going to supply and, you know, how they're going to supply it. There is no way to coordinate across an entire economy, any of that, not because the computing power is not there. The computing power is there. Or can be there, but because you can't get inside my head, you can't make choices for me. And it's about choices. That's the essence of markets. They're about choices. And they're about choices where individuals are pursuing their self-interest. And AI can't replace me in terms of my self-interest. So Mark, no, AI cannot replace human beings and cannot become a central planner. This is why freedom is an absolute value as long as human nature is what it is, and as long as we're dealing with human beings. Thank you, Robert. Andrew says, what do you think about Zelensky's pessimistic comment about the war to time magazine? Does the waning interest of the world create a real threat that Russia could win? Yes, I mean, it can. Ukraine does not have, for example, the productive capabilities to produce the weapon systems, its need to defend itself, never wanting to beat the Russians back. The world is losing interest in Ukraine, which is a massive mistake because this is still, you know, it's all part of one war. That'll be the next show I do, probably sometime next week, on kind of the geopolitical assessment of the global geopolitical assessment. That is, what's the relationship between Ukraine war, Hamas war, and China, and the global south, and all of that. So a kind of an assessment of where we stand globally, and Russia, and China, and Iran's ambitions. So I'll do a show dedicated to that. But no, Zelensky is in trouble, and he knows it. I mean, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military forces has also made some fairly pessimistic statements recently about the lack of progress in the counter-offensive, the difficulties the Ukrainians are finding, encountering, as they push the Russians back. You know, they're not going to lose any time soon, but certainly, if the West stops supporting Ukraine, Ukraine is in trouble. Ukraine is in trouble. Ryan, I have been telling my friends to read what justice demands, but I don't think I have convinced anyone. 45-second TikToks take way less effort. All right, yeah, but 45-second TikToks will not convince anybody of a argument of a cause. They reinforce the existing altruism in our culture, which Hamas can take advantage of, and the supporters Hamas can take advantage of. You can't win on the side of good when goodness is radical, revolutionary, turning the status quo upside down. You cannot win with TikTok. You can do propaganda, but the propaganda has to be reinforcing of existing values, not challenging the very essence of those values. So keep pushing the book. Bash Band again, if you were offered to run for political office in Israel, would you accept? I wouldn't run, but if I was offered a seat in the government without having to join a political party and without having to run in an election, I would take it. So if somebody came to me and said, you're on, we want you to run the Israeli economy or be an economics minister, I would probably take it. It would be interesting, probably not fun, but certainly interesting. I don't think I could do defense only because I'm not sure why the generals would listen to me. And I also, I think my views on defense are so radical that, yeah, being defense secretary wouldn't allow anything to be passed. I don't think you can convince anybody. Again, it's the altruism that wouldn't let them fight the war as it should be. But yeah, I take certain positions. If I could, it's a small country, you can have, you can have big influence by just having the bully pulpit and having the opportunity to convey ideas. And so I would take treasury secretary or economics minister if it was ever offered to me. It won't be, don't worry. I'm not going. It will never be offered. It won't happen. All right, thank you. Thanks to all the superchatters. Thank you, Matthew, who just became a member. So don't forget, you too can become a member. Just press the membership button underneath. Don't forget before you leave to like the show. It helps the algorithms. It really does. Comment, you know, do interact. The more you interact with the content, the better the ranking from the algorithm's perspective. So thank you, everybody. Thank you in advance for the liking. Just press that button if you like the show. If you didn't like the show, that's fine. And I really, really appreciate those of you who would consider becoming monthly contributors on Patreon or on your own book show dot com slash support on subscribe star or again by becoming a member. Okay, Andrew has a quick question. How long do you think it will take Israel to defeat Hamas if it followed my principle? To defeat Hamas? I don't know. A couple of weeks. A couple of weeks. All right. Thank you guys. Yeah, feel free to push the dislike button. If you dislike, as I said, all engagement helps. So dislike buttons help as well. Thanks, everybody. I will see you all tomorrow for the ask me anything. Please join us and bring lots of questions with you. Thank you. It'll be, it'll be fun. 3 p.m. East Coast time. Bye, everybody.