 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom. Rational self-interest. And individual rocks. This is The Iran Book Show. All right everybody welcome to Iran Book Show on this uh Monday. Beginning of the week. Hopefully everybody is having a uh had a great weekend and looking forward to a great week and start it off the morning well and all of that stuff. All right we are going to jump into our news roundup um uh pretty quickly here we've got a lot to talk about war updates on the war in Nagaza in Ukraine, COP 28, Monroe Doctrine, well the Venezuela situation, student loans and and and Trump appeals uh hopefully we'll get through all of those. I do have a hard stop at two so we are a little constrained on time. I will remind you that the Iran Institute in Iran Institute is a sponsor of the show um so uh if you are a uh if you are read Iran's fiction interested in studying objectivism uh more deeply a potential intellectual career maybe then you should apply to the Iran Conference um you know about the one in Amsterdam that's primarily geared towards Europeans and hopefully all of you uh Europeans will sign up for that and and go but then there's one in the US um it's going to be in Austin Texas which is going to be a blast great city uh for March 22nd to 24th next year uh you'll have a chance to delve deeper into objectivism, explore its applications, a wide variety of topics, you're able to meet ARU faculty uh Ben Baer will be there uh Greg Salamiere will be there uh maybe others um so yeah iran.org slash start here if you want to uh register if you want to get a scholarship for if you're interested in attending iran.org slash start here don't miss out all right um tomorrow we'll have two shows the regular shows uh nothing tonight uh I don't think I have anything else administrative oh Thursday oh yeah I've got I've got God I forgot about this um let me see um uh Thursday I have a um my first show in Hebrew so don't forget that and uh uh if you're interested in um if you're interested in watching it'll be right here uh at 10am I think 10am east coast time we'll do a show in Hebrew for those of you speak Hebrew those of you don't speak Hebrew you'll just get to speak to watch me and talk funny language um I've got one other thing I wanted to say uh relating to uh Israel let me just find this I keep forgetting this is embarrassing um and uh we'll talk uh yeah so there is uh there's a fundraiser tomorrow the 5th of December uh the fundraiser is for a group of kids who live in Ashkelon in Israel uh who are affiliated with a school for exceptional kids in Ashkelon Ashkelon is in the south of Israel uh it is the uh target of a many of the rocket attacks and it has been it has been evacuated uh it's part of the Gaza operation Ashkelon has been uh evacuated these are all uh these students who are part of something called the atlas juniors uh atlas from atlas shrugged of course uh they are spread out all over Israel staying in variety of different places because they can't go home not yet anyway um and they've been displaced since the terror attack um now so tomorrow there'll be a fundraiser uh on uh at 11 a.m east coast time um now how do you get there right you can sign up at the the wellness esquire.as.me the wellness esquire.as.me i'll put i'll put the the the link uh on the uh in the chat in a minute so you can uh so you can find it if it's if it's working doesn't look like it's working now um all right um and uh the fundraiser is for these kids uh to help them out and uh and to support the the atlas juniors program which is a program for these kids um and but you will hear from the kids there uh you will hear from the founders of atlas juniors um and uh from from uh uh some of the some of the kids who live in sderot which is a which is one of the cities that were attacked on october 7th so these are some of the kids who survived all that and are now spread over israel so anyway uh so if you'd like to support that if you'd like to hear the stories i think this is going to be in english um but uh you can uh you can check it out and as i said i will try to post the um yeah there it is um i'll i'll be post i'll post the uh the url in a few minutes uh on the chat um all right uh let's see uh i think that's it so we can jump right in uh to the program okay so um uh it ceasefire is over as we all know israel continues uh military operations throughout the weekend uh this morning uh israel is both the israeli military is both completing it let's say its mission in the north of gaza uh not so much mopping up operations but taking over uh pockets of areas where they they have not entered yet uh and and eliminate fighters uh in those areas as well as discovering more tunnels blowing that up uh so there is continuing operations on the ground in the north some of it mopping up much of it is now going into areas that they haven't gone before and doing the kind of uh uh you know slow uh uh slow work of of just just getting rid of any element of hamas in the area uh and discovering every tunnel shaft there 800 tunnel shafts so far they've destroyed 500 discovering the rest of them uh you know and doing just the grinding work necessary uh to basically eliminate uh the hamas uh in the north uh in the south of gaza where um many of the people who lived or most of people who lived in the north have been evac evacuated to uh israel is now is now in the midst of launching a both a aerial bombardment uh afghan yunus in rafa hanunus is the largest city town outside of gaza city it is the largest in the south again bastion of hamas but then the whole gaza strip is uh in israel has is uh it was asking residents of hanunus to leave hanunus has been for weeks now for a couple of weeks uh and uh it has been bombing the area since uh the end of the ceasefire and this morning uh reports are the tanks are entering hanunus as is really ground operation in the area are starting as we've talked about the whole uh ground operations in the south are going to be very difficult because of the number of civilian civilians there this is where all the civilians in the north that evacuated to massive pressure from the united states to minimize civilian casualties massive pressure for the united states to resume ceasefire negotiations massive pressure for the united states to stand down uh by then it feels the pressure from his left uh but it was always going to be the case that this would happen uh the u.s will not tolerate complete israeli victory they never have uh and i i don't know if they ever will but uh israel so far is ignoring those requests and uh moving forward with the operations i give them credit for for doing what they said they would do uh you know and and again uh we should my guess is within a week or so the north will be completely under israeli control there'll still be pockets there'll still be terrorists coming out of uh tunnels and holes in the ground to attack israeli troops so basically the north will be under israel's control uh hanunus is not going to be easy uh none of this is easy and uh israel will keep moving into the south uh in aggressive in aggressive fashion so uh that is uh kind of that's the that's the update from the ground you know a few things to add to that just in terms of what is uh what is going on again israel's ordered these evacuation everybody's complaining where we supposed to evacuate from as kamas is really the answer as kamas where he's supposed to evacuate from the other ones who started this they're the ones who got you into this mess kamas should provide um uh maybe they can open up the tunnels and you can go hide in the tunnels uh maybe they can negotiate a deal with egypt so the civilians can move into egypt uh everything's on the table but it's kamas's problem not israel's problem israel is there to defeat kamas and to bring gaza to heal uh and and to teach the gaza's a lesson you support kamas you support terrorism you support the idea of the annihilation of the state of israel well that ain't happening guys ain't happening never will happen and you will suffer the consequence of this support and the more you support it the more you will suffer and so i mean this idea that this war i've said this before this is a war against kamas is wrong this is a war against gaza it's a war against the palestinians as it should be and it should be defined that way the israelis are again weaklings for not saying that for not claiming that for not arguing that uh it's it's a word to destroy kamas not to destroy the palestinians but it is a war against the palestinians and and that is that is to bring the palestinians to heal to their knees uh to a full understanding of the consequence of initiating force against israel um you know there continues to be attacks on israel from the north israel keeps responding to those attacks very much on the um if you will israel is now taking initiative with regards to khizballah in the north it is much more in a reactive mode uh one area where israel has now been even in a reactive mode and that is what we've got yemen yemen is now uh the hutis in yemen are now actively uh trying to block uh and and disrupt shipping in the red sea going into the uh going into the um the indian ocean uh over the weekend they attack three commercial ships with missiles one of them uh might might be damaged extent of maybe sinking uh they also launched drones which the us uh knocked out of the air but what is what is truly astounding here is neither the us nor israel has done anything in response to this uh there there's been no um significant response in terms of israel engaging with the hutis in terms of bombing them uh in terms of uh using israel's uh ground to ground missile capabilities or air force uh to go to yemen and destroy these uh these forces which israel has the capacity at least to damage them significantly from the air of course the us has significant military forces there it has destroyers there and us is doing nothing uh to stop this the us is is uh is letting uh the hutis basically disrupt the shipping lanes and defaulting on its responsibility i think this us navies responsibility to keep the shipping lanes open in the world it wouldn't take much from the us uh to engage here but it is chosen so far to do nothing just as it is chosen to do very little every time uh every time uh its bases are attacked in the middle east by iranian affiliated groups so far the united states has done very very very little and certainly has not taken this to its source which is iran of course the hutis do not respond and do not act without iran's support without iran's sanction they wouldn't be disrupting these shipping lanes without iran's sanction uh and uh again nothing will change them at least nothing will change them at least as long as the current regime in iran is allowed to to survive this has been true for 40 years this is the number one enemy of the united states and of israel in the area it was never iraq it wasn't even that much afghanistan this is the this is the real enemy always has been and until the united states does something to uh bring that regime to crush that regime nothing is going to change and and the united states and israel is willing to tolerate the hutis and other iranian affiliated groups in the middle east attacking israeli us and international assets um is only going to make things worse not going to make things better so let's hope the united states wakes up israel is distracted right now but let's hope the united states wakes up my assumption is that the u.s basically told israel to stand down and not to go after iran or to go after the hutis and that it would take care of it not doing a very good job of taking care of it right all right that is a quick update from the middle east a quick update on on ukraine um basically ukraine is now winter has has arrived in that part of the world uh it basically the battlefields a large extent are shut down there's snow on the ground it is freezing cold it is super difficult to move never mind move in in fight uh you know the next three four months are going to be probably four months are going to be pretty quiet there'll still be battles they'll still be fighting there'll still be young men losing their lives but overall not much progress for either side is going to happen uh russia keeps sending troops into the meat grinder like they did in bakhmut a year ago uh so they might make some territory gains because of their willingness just to lose thousands and thousands of troops uh but but nothing strategic of significance is probably going to happen um over the next uh over the next few months because of the weather ukraine though is in i think real dire straits and the dire straits do not have to do with anything happening on the battlefield ukraine is making actually some some interesting progress on the battlefield nothing dramatic nothing major uh overall disappointing but uh it does have some some potential some potential there the real challenges that as we've always known ukraine to a large extent in order to win certainly it requires support from the west it requires at least enough support to be able to continuously rearm itself and and and sustain its military efforts and that requires not just ukrainian industry which is going full speed to try to provide ammunition and so on to the troops but also um ammunition for the for the weapon systems that the west has provided um that is that is now problematic the EU uh or NATO EU is struggling to provide that kind of support it is um you know Germany is in a massive budgetary problem they have committed to increasing the military which they now will not be able to because we've talked about this before the courts there uh basically mandated a dramatic shrinking in the german uh in german spending so germany has a real budget problem it does not have any additional resources to allocate towards a funding ukraine war that is true of several countries in the EU and then you've got of course uh the slovakia and hungry which are opposed to any support of uh of ukraine uh uh geert wilders who is not exactly a supporter of of ukraine either just one in the netherlands and the netherlands was an important and wealthy a supporter of ukraine uh so the tide is definitely uh shifting in europe away from ukrainian supports and that is going to be a massive problem they cannot decide on on the amount of money and the amount of weapon systems to supply ukraine and then of course in the us republicans are more and more republicans are opposed to supporting ukraine and republicans cannot have not been able to pass a bill to support israel ukraine and taiwan and to provide some border changes that is still being negotiated that is still in limbo without support from the us without support from the european union ukraine is going to have a very long winter and it's going to be a struggle when spring comes uh to uh resume its counter offensive and and to take the initiative uh in this war so uh real challenges i think for ukraine look moving forward because of the inability of the us and the eu to get their act together that could be that all that will be resolved in the next few weeks and i think it likely will be i think republicans will ultimately vote to fund ukraine but i'm sure it's creating a lot of angst in kiev and um and uh on the ukrainian front all right uh what else do we have cop 28 is uh just is the gift that keeps on giving you keep you keep getting different stories the big thing in cop 28 is that the sultan al-jaber who as a guest is a doctor or is a phd who is the president of cop 28 he is part of the united arab emirates um uh hosting committee uh he is the president of that hosting committee for uh the uh the uh the event he is also the ceo of the abudabi national oil company and the united arab emirates environment minister talk about conflicts of talk about conflicts of interest right so here he is hosting cop 28 in which the secretary general of the u.s says we need to phase out or uh uh first our fuels now the host is the ceo of a national oil company and also the environment minister it just it just it couldn't get any more comical than this and ridiculous and evil and i i i think maybe what he and the oil companies are all there as well maybe we'll learn from this is you can't appease the nutcases but they probably won't learn anything from it anyway this uh dr sultan al-jabbar um basically announced in a speech uh to the conference says and i quote there was no science out there or no scenario out there that says the phase out of fossil fuels is what's going to achieve 1.5 that's the 1.5 centigrade warming uh less than that is is the goal and he says unless you want to take the world back into the caves now of course he's absolutely right of course yeah what's he doing hosting cop 28 that and and and and of course the comments just you know made people like al goh just apoplectic al goh was like uh you know he quote al goh he should not be taken seriously he's protecting his profits and placing them in a higher priority than the survival of human civilization no quite the opposite uh you al goh by ending use of fossil fuel are the risk to human civilization not the dubai national oil company which is keeping civilization afloat right now uh yeah so al goh is flipping out the un is flipping out uh generally uh all cop 28 is there to do is to show how absurd and ridiculous the environmentalist agenda is but how it has co-opted all the big money in the world everybody has to go everybody schmoozes everybody flies in there with their uh uh fossil fuel fueled uh uh corporate jets and generally it is a uh you know just a a a ridiculous uh and you know a ridiculous uh the whole thing is a ridiculous exercise uh but it you know it's exercise and the fanfare that uh it seems that anybody who wants to show that they care show that the virtuous show that they care about the climate and they care about the planet has to attend but the idea that the United Arab Emirates is actually hosting this event and that al jabal um you know is is the is is the the head of this thing is just shows you how ridiculous it is uh you know um I think at the news conference on monday I guess today uh al jabal said he was quite surprised at the criticism which he blasted as quote constant and repeated attempts to undermine the work of cop 28 presidency that's him and the attempts to undermine the message will keep repeating that we respect the science well if you respect the science then you should have folded cop 28 a long time ago right all right um he is uh surprised um one uh I guess positive kind of positive thing that uh was agreed upon in cop 28 I don't know if agreed upon pledged I don't know what the pledges means they're probably worthless but 22 countries pledged to triple nuclear capacity um uh during cop 28 uh you know I think that's all meaningless it includes fans uh fans is unlikely to triple their capacity they already have a significant amount of a warming majority of their electricity produced by nuclear maybe they want to do more and export it out to the rest of europe which is going to be hungry for electricity give it a when the sun doesn't shine I don't know but britain fans of the united states it doesn't I don't think the united states is anywhere close to tripling their uh their uh nuclear capacity by 2050 you would have to have projects in the pipeline right now to get them online by 2050 and it's just it's just not happening anyway it makes for a good headline all right uh you know the whole what's going on so no before we get that all right so this weekend this weekend was indeed 200 years for the uh for the uh um uh articulation formulation of the manual doc doctrine this is uh uh this is uh president Monroe uh in 1823 uh during his uh I think state of the union uh his seventh uh such state of the union uh prompted by his uh secretary of states uh john quincy adams declared basically uh that the western hemisphere should be free of great power intervention that uh european should stick to europe and to the existing colonies uh outside of the americas and that the americas uh want to be free of great power intervention and and this was this has been coined I think since 1850 or so the Monroe doctrine with the idea that america is responsible for the western hemisphere for north and south america uh and that it will protect it from interventions by uh the european uh the european um uh the european powers the Monroe doctrine uh so this is this was past 200 years ago of course it has a very spotty record both in terms of the united states not living up to it by uh as far back as mid in 19th century allowing britain and other powers to intervene in latin america of course it couldn't do much 1832 it had just fought a war with britain to a stalemate the second war it had fought with britain and this one to a stalemate after Washington dc was actually burned to the ground um the united states did not have a navy or a military force that was capable of actually living up to the Monroe doctrine by the end of the 19th century it did and it it basically helped kick the uh spanish out certainly of the caribbeans and whatever remnant they still had in in latin america as part of that as part of that kicking the spanish out the united states to control the puerto rico uh liberated and allowed cuba helped cuba to gain its independence um and so on uh Monroe doctrine over the years ebden flowed in terms of uh how american presidents have viewed it uh and uh but you know one has to say that over the last few decades very little has been done uh wouldn't call them great powers but both russia china and uh iran have had significant influence and significant dabbling in uh latin america politics and uh including uh military forces uh training military forces establishing terrorist uh camps for his bala iran has supported that in place like venezuela but generally venezuela has been a hub for the support of of russia iran and china clearly in opposition to the united states and clearly for their own uh for their own goals and and and means this all becomes relevant right now because uh uh is you've probably heard or i told you on this show last week venezuela just held a referendum to decide whether it should lay claim to two-thirds of guiana which is a country on its southern border uh the this area in guiana which has been in dispute for a hundred years but uh where the un and i think uh other world countries have recognized that as guyanese territory um recently it's been discovered that there's a lot of offshore uh oil and and potentially natural gas um uh in this uh in this area uh is a consequence uh venezuela now has its eye on it of course venezuela's real goal is not just to take the oil and gas venezuela has huge reservoirs of oil and gas it's primarily it's for uh maduro to distract his own population from their own poverty before an election probably coming up next year where he will actually face an opposition and where the united states is supposedly are going to make sure that it's a fair election and we'll see if the anna says can actually do that and we'll do that and so on anyway the referendum was held over the weekend of whether venezuela should uh annex this territory and in spite of what is by most outside observers was a very very low turnout uh the venezuelan government claims that uh it wasn't so low it was pretty high turnout and that uh the referendum got the the idea of annexing got a huge uh majority and uh and uh so they are now laying their claim to annex it's not a binding referendum but uh i think it was a show of strength for maduro as i told you last week uh the brazilian military has beefed up its forces on their border it is a real question of what the united states would do if venezuela invaded griana uh not sure we'd do anything but not but it it does put in play them on road doctor and particularly given the influence that iran and china but primarily russia and cuba have in venezuela and the fact that venezuela is such a destabilizing force and at the bidener station she's got to deal with venezuela to buy its oil and uh and in exchange the venezuelans committed to this fair election next year uh yes regimes like venezuela are very good at living up to their commitments around these kind of things but you know it's the bidener station after all so what can you expect all right quickly two other topics i shouldn't have had so many topics uh all right um quickly i want to spend a little bit more time on this i'll probably talk about this another time as well but i just want to mention the fact that student loans for the last few months since the supreme court threw out the attempt by the bidener station to basically write off or write down a significant number of these loans and congress in the debt ceiling agreement in the spring required that payments resume this fall payments on student loans many of you might be experiencing this have been resumed uh now they've been resumed on a on a more lenient schedule with a lot of a lot of these have been restructured and a lot of uh some people have seen um their student loans forgiven completely so the bidener station has done a lot of gimmicks to to basically reduce the debt load for many many people in spite of the fact that they couldn't completely write them off the consequence of this is that uh there's been a a significant inflow of money into the department of education uh back almost to the levels before covid before student loans were basically uh not required to be paid at all uh and and and it's of course as hit consumers who now uh young consumers who had uh you know had had taken out this loans but didn't have to pay them so had this extra money to spend on other things um what we're seeing in the data is now they have less money to spend they're spending on on on paying back their loans instead of on consumption uh that could have a hit on on certain retailers uh who are also seeing uh raising uh credit card debt auto debt and because of higher interest rates higher and higher percentage of disposable income of americans is going to interest payments instead instead of again consuming so all of this to suggest that it wouldn't be surprising if this holiday season did not see dramatic increases in consumption did not see a huge spikes uh on uh you know uh for retailers and uh this could have an implication for a slowing of the economy but since as i've always told you it is production that drives the economy not consumption i don't expect this in and of itself to have that big of an impact on um on on the economy overall uh it is still true that employment is still high there's still massive numbers of unfilled jobs wages are still increasing indeed by every estimate wages have only increased more than what anybody expected and i will do a show on the new studies about inequality that are coming out that are fascinating about about whether whether we've seen this explosion of inequality that the left and many people on the right including uh trump argued was happening uh we will see if that's indeed the case whether the lower middle class and the working class have really suffered as much as so many people out there claim they have i'll do a whole show with that with graphs and everything there's a at least one study now has been published in academic journal and there's a bunch of more information coming out about about all of this which i want to put all together and do a show on all right finally um uh you know uh president former president trump hopefully only former president trump um has appealed a couple of the lawsuits against him one of them is uh the federal the federal criminal case against him with regard to january 6th he appealed that uh claiming absolute immunity uh federal judge has denied that appeal uh saying that he does not have absolute immunity that his activism around january 6th his general activism around the denial of the election was not part of his duties as a president was not part of his responsibility and a president immunity only applies to those responsibilities that work that he did as president and therefore the the uh the the court case against him can go ahead uh that was u.s district judge tanya chitkan she writes the court cannot conclude that our constitution cloaks former presidents with the absolute immunity for every any federal crimes they committed while in office unquote now there's no question trump will appeal this again whether he thinks that uh whether he thinks this is uh uh winnable or not you will keep appealing it because he wants to delay the trial as much as possible uh he is running for president after all uh this will probably go to a uh appellate court and could land up with the supreme court sometime early next year uh that could really delay if the supreme court chooses to review it that could really delay this court case into maybe after the election so it's going to be interesting to watch this uh exactly what happens exactly what happens uh here uh the judge continued to say four years quote four years of services command and chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens i love it that is uh um to continue whatever immunity a sitting president may enjoy the united states has only one chief executive at a time in that position does not confer a lifetime get out of jail free pass former presidents enjoy no special condition on their federal criminal criminal liability defendant may be subject to federal investigation indictment prosecution conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office wow that is pretty straightforward uh so um and then of course she ruled that this particular activity wasn't part of his job as president but part of his job as campaigner is running for president so this will be appealed we will see what the appellate court on a second case another appeal this one uh was uh the federal appeals court in washington dc uh this was a an appeal uh to to for civil lawsuit there uh there have been three civil lawsuits against trump um about regarding the january 6 both by um two congressmen democrats and a capital police uh and capital police officers they have sued for um you know for uh for civil responsibility for what happened uh trump appealed is um and uh uh and uh you know chief just uh chief judge swin swin van son who is the of the federal appeals court in washington dc wrote the president does not spend every minute of every day exercising official responsibilities and when he acts outside the functions of his office he does not continue to enjoy immunity when he acts as an unofficial private capacity he is subject to civil suit like any private citizen this is great i think both of these are basically reinforcing the idea of the rule of law in the united states you couldn't get a ruling like this in china or in russia right uh so you know whether these suits have merit or not is a different question but whether the president can be sued um i think is um i i think is uh is uh is is good i think he should be able to be sued now again this will go i'm sure this this is a federal appellate's court so the next level of appeal here would be either to the whole court right this was a three-man uh panel it could they could appeal it to to the whole court or and to the supreme court so again we will see where this goes but this all relates to the question of can a president be sued or criminally charged for actions he takes while he's president that will do not relate to his official functions the official responsibilities as president i think for whatever it's worth these rulings are good in that they define the rule of law they don't specify whether he's guilty or not they just specify that the cases can indeed move move forward right um all right uh that is everything that i have so let us go to the super chat you too can ask questions in the super chat or you can just support the show with a sticker um we're about halfway to our goal so that's pretty good uh but but not a lot of questions also not a lot of time so stickers would be great right now just because i'm limited for time with the questions although any questions left here we'll roll over to to next time i can answer them and we'll uh we'll do um all right west says any interest in seeing the new gonzala movie i highly recommend it great human drama and a view of cultural changes that happened in japan after the defeat in world war two i had zero interest in seeing the gonzala movie i mean literally zero i've never i never saw the original gonzala's i've no interest and then over to my surprise over the weekend my son said he saw it and really enjoyed it and thought i would like it which surprised me and and he has great taste in movies and knows me so the fact that he recommended it and now west is saying it was a good movie you know i'm tempted now so i might go see it i might wait until it's on apple tv but i might go see it um uh and and and see what all what what you guys are all talking about my wife won't go with me so i might have to go see it by myself but uh interesting interesting i always thought i i never could take the gonzala movie seriously so i i don't know how i could take them seriously here but i get if you just viewed as a kind of monster sci-fi movie and just look at the human aspects of it it could be interesting uh it could be interesting to watch it would be interesting to compare it to the originals which i uh which i uh uh which i um you know which i would find interesting to compare all right uh nick fro hey iran i believe there are some key parallels and differences between the israeli-palestinian conflict and the troubles in northern ireland and i think it would be interesting if you compared these two conflicts well yeah i mean there are there are big differences between the two i think but i haven't really thought it really through and what we need to do that and to and to have kind of a full grasp of of history of ireland but island two in a sense was occupied island not two and i mean they all relate to the british occupation right palestine was occupied by the british but for a very short period of time the conflict between the british and the irish goes back a very long time and uh and uh you know it it the the degree to which the irish the irish conflict revolves around religion is is truly astounding given the protestants catholics are all supposed to be christian after all um and um so it's um it is interesting uh i mean suddenly a big difference between the two conflicts the big differences that i think that israeli-palestinian conflict there clearly is one side representing civilization and the other side representing barbarism there's just it's unequivocal uh and and and there's no there's no uh wishy washy way to to to present it there's a sense in which the conflict in ireland is a continuation of a conflict that's been happening within civilization within europe uh going back to the 16 17th centuries it's a continuation of the 30 year war and 100 year war between catholics and protestants um and and and a border conflict between the different empire over the different powers within europe but why don't i'm going to copy this over why don't i give that a little bit more thought and get back to it you know in a more thoughtful way um and uh and and cover it on a future show thank you nick sorry sorry it's so short but i i think yeah i just don't have enough of the context of the history i'd have to do a little bit of review it tata said thoughts on u.s. government threatening chipmaker navida navidia uh for attempting to get around chip design uh restrictions the fear seems to be around exporting chips that would enhance the prc's ai capabilities uh i haven't seen the government's the government threatening chipmaker navidia but it doesn't surprise me navidia wants to export chips to china uh it was a big chunk of its business now it's trying to export i think less powerful chips but the government is worried about that nvds thank you ian nvidia um this but of course china seems to be manufacturing uh more sophisticated chips already by itself without um the us but the nvds chips are particularly used for ai and particularly optimized for that um it does seem like there is uh you know this is a continuation of kind of the chip wars uh and uh i think this is only going to get more complicated and more there's going to be more angst around this uh as we move forward because it's it's a real issue there there's a it's a real threat to the to your security but on the other hand there's only so much you can do by limiting trade there's very little you can do by limiting trade at the end these products will get to china at the end china will have these capabilities you can delay you can slow it down uh and there's only so much you want to be able to limit your own your own companies in terms of what they can do and what they uh in their capability so it's a real tension and and i don't think it's going to be easily solved uh a big chunk of the r&d that nvidia has of profits that it produces from china that allows it to produce these state-of-the-art chips that then are used for us products us self-defense defense industry but can also then be smuggled into china or in the video nvidia's case some of them maybe at the lower end even exported to china so the exact technicality of what is going on i don't know but i do think this is an ongoing issue which constantly will come to the forefront there's also you know it used to be that the netherlands had a complete you know dominance over the very high-end equipment that makes chips now japan has new technology that might you might be the equal of what the the dutch have uh asml has but again very technical and i'm not i don't know enough about what the technicalities of it but i'd have to read up a lot more michael says strong people will automatically stop trying if they feel unwanted they don't fix it or beg they will just walk away well i don't know if that's true um some people don't give a damn about being wanted or unwanted they just do what they think is right so strong people don't care about whether they were wanted or not they'll do what's right michael says why is the enlightenment so much stronger in america than the european countries where it originated because here it got entrenched into the very founding documents of the country and ultimately into the very spirit i think it's because america was a land of immigrants it was because it was a land of the frontier everything was new everything was was in upheaval and these ideas and the old ideas the ideas of old europe pre-enlightenment europe were far less entrenched in america because it was in the frontier and it could absorb immigrants who were coming for something completely new and were willing to take on something completely different frank for hebu we listened from right to left here that's right um kabuta christopher higins can you comment on his description of christians as a war criminal i don't think he's a war criminal i i i don't think there is such a thing as laws of war i don't think there is such a thing as war criminal per se i don't know exactly what that means i i think he was really really bad and i think he did horrible things and i think he was ultimately not good for american interests not good for for the good the just uh in the world i think he promoted a type of farm policy that was unbelievably destructive but i think this labeling him a war criminal is is is is silly uh and and again what is the jurisdiction under which he would be tried there is no such a jurisdiction there is no international law international law is a bogus concept you can't have a law that cannot be enforced rafael was jesus real name julius seiza no i don't think so why i don't know where that comes from sorry um enrique says i recommend reading listening to david gorgans never finished jean rooney recommended it and i found it very useful and inspiring all right copying it over to my list of things to follow up on thanks enrique i appreciate that james says the new gonzola movie is a movie that you will be glad you watched in theaters i was skeptical after watching it i see it deserves the praise thanks james another thumbs up for gonzola all right uh and daniel says is genocide a package deal it has been tossed around a lot here lately it's only the way it's being used is a package deal or the way it's being used is is non-defined it's it's it's it's just an anti-cost it's an anti-cost step it can be a package deal but it just nobody defines it it it should be a proper way of of defining it clearly i don't think the norm book trials were about war crimes or what they call crimes against humanity it was a special tribunal specially formulated for world war two formulated by the allies they didn't assume to be speaking for the world but but you know wasn't it wasn't a violation of international law it was it was crimes against humanity and and and that's what they were tried for all right thanks everybody i really do need to run here and i will see you all tomorrow if somebody wants to step in with 40 bucks to get us to the target that would be fantastic but otherwise um have a great rest of your monday and i will see you on tuesday for another news round up and then we'll do something in the evening not you exactly what thanks guys talk to you soon