 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Friday, August 4th. I hope everybody has had a fantastic week. Looking forward to a relaxing, wonderful, productive weekend. Alright, so we have got a full agenda today. We're going to cover the news. I'll remind everybody of yesterday's show on immigration with Augustina. That was fantastic, so I hope those of you didn't watch it live or haven't watched it yet, go on to my channel, watch the interview with Augustina on immigration. Also, tomorrow, 3 p.m. East Coast time, we'll have a show. Not sure what the topic will be, but there will be a show tomorrow at 3 p.m. East Coast time. That's it for the weekend. I'll take the rest of the time off. And yes, don't forget, we've got a fundraising target, of course, for each one of these shows. And these new shows, it's important that we reach these. So as I'm convinced that, so that I get convinced that this is something you guys value and you want me to continue the daily news shows. Alright, let's jump in. One of the most, I don't know, I mean, if you want to understand why people hate the mainstream media and why people don't trust the mainstream media, I mean, there are millions of examples of this. But this one just jumped out, you know, jumps out at you as just, this is insanity. And this is offensive to pretty much everybody. Nobody wins in this kind of headline. So this is the headline in The Washington Post, WashingtonPost.com. The headline of the story is, anti-LGBTQ backlash grows across Middle East. Fine, up until now. Karma echoing U.S. cultural wars. Now, I mean, do you know anything about what anti-LGBTQ backlash means in the Middle East? As bad as maybe some people consider their cultural wars to be. It's not in the same universe, people. This is the headline on the tweet from The Washington Post account. Now, when I first saw this, it was quoted somewhere else. It was actually quoted in a Barry Weiss story. And it was like, no, I mean, this can't be right. Somebody's mocked up the Washington Post thing. You know, Washington Post is bad, but this is so egregious. So I actually looked up to Washington Post and here it is. LGBTQ plus communities in the Middle East face a growing crackdown. Mirroring efforts by American conservatives to restrict the rights of gay and transgender people. That's right. I mean, the fact that in West Bank, in the Palestinian Authority territory, they just beheaded a guy for being gay, that mirrors what? What the conservatives might be doing. I mean, you could criticize conservatives without comparing them and mirroring beheading. The fact that in the Gaza Strip and the Hamas territory, they just throw gays off of buildings. That mirrors what exactly the conservatives are doing. The fact that in Iran, they hang gays off of construction cranes in public so everybody can see this is what is done to homosexuals. That mirrors what the conservatives, I mean, you could be critic of the conservatives. Hell, you know I am. Without being absurd and ridiculous, clearly there is, there has been for a long time. A, you know, a, I wouldn't say a backlash, there's never been openness. Now, the particular story has pictures of, again, lesbian LGBTQ rally in Turkey. Now, Turkey is changing. Turkey is becoming more and more religious and there is a backlash against gays and LGBTQs in Turkey because Turkey was for a long time very liberal society, at least in Istanbul, in its center. And that's changing. Odoğan, Ogoğan is reflecting the ever-growing conservatism and religiosity of the community and they're not yet throwing people off of buildings in Turkey. But the rest of the Middle East, you try to talk about gay marriage in the Middle East. They'll laugh, they'll laugh at you. What do they do to gays in Saudi Arabia? I mean, Dubai, which is everybody loves Dubai. Everybody goes visits Dubai. Everybody goes, what's the attitude towards gays in Dubai? Maybe if you're a tourist and you're gay and you're leaving money, they don't mind. But God, imagine if you're an Arab Muslim and you're gay. What are these people thinking? Of course, luckily, the Twitter community has just lambasted these people and somebody wrote, we were planning to move to Iraq so our trans kids could all freely live as their authentic selves. Now we're rethinking things. Yeah, it's insane. I hear Saudi Arabia is a little better. So my friends tell me, they gay children were beaten on the playground instead of thrown off the wall. So they were adopting well. I mean, it goes on and on and on, making fun of this and it deserves to be made fun of, it deserves to be ridiculed. I mean, this is exactly the kind of stuff that makes the mainstream media look stupid, talk about biased. So yeah, I mean, this is the Washington Post, not some secondary trivial. You'd expect some editor catches somebody to realize, wait a minute, this is what we're doing. Not right. This is crazy. But no, so this is, you know, when you start, when you start trivializing, hanging people, stoning them, throwing off the walls and the latest story I read about the beheading of the kid in the West Bank. Oh, God, don't minimize this stuff. You could fight conservatives in America without minimizing the barbarism and the violence and the horror that LGBTQ people experience in more primitive parts of the world. And it's okay to call parts of the world primitive. It's okay to call some practices barbaric and some cultures barbaric. That is the reality. And unless you face reality, you're not going to pretend, you're not going to protect gay people. But, you know, by pretending that American conservatives are the same in the Middle East, the only people who are ultimately going to suffer from that are gays everywhere around the world and LGBTQ people all over the world. All right. And now for something completely different, although a part of the world where you do not want to be gay and you do not want to be LGBTQ and that is Russia. So a lot of stories are accumulated about what's going on in Russia and what's going on on the battlefield. And not just in Russia itself, but on the battlefield with Ukraine. So I figured I'd just lump them all together and cover them all at the same time. So, you know, let's do this. So it'll be relatively quick. Again, we don't have a huge amount of time in these shows to delve into it, but a quick update. So first battlefield update, what's going on in the battlefield between Ukraine and Russia. And the reality is not much. Ukrainians are making slow progress. They are moving towards the target, but a much slower pace than I think they hoped for, maybe even that they expected the fortifications that the Russians built over the winter in the south and in the east of Ukraine really, but on the area that Russia controls have proved far more difficult for the Ukrainians to overcome than I think they expected. The unbelievable, deadly minefields and trenches and a lot of obstacles that the Russians are really dug in. Of course, the Russians have numerical superiority. We always knew that. But I think what really is mattering here is less the numerical and more just the fact that the Ukrainians are not so much slowed down by Russian soldiers as they are by Russian mines, by Russian obstacles. So the Russians have really prepared for a real defensive operation here. In spite of that, Ukrainians are making some progress, slow, steady, taking a lot of casualties as are the Russians. And it's still true that Ukraine is still not deployed all its forces. So it still appears that what the Ukrainian military is trying to do is figure out what are the holes? What are the places that they can punch through? And so there are a lot of the operations just to find weak spots. At some point, the Russians counterattacked in the northeast in the area where Ukraine had a lot of success last fall. And they counterattacked near Crimea. And they initially had partially success, but it really does appear that the Ukrainians have pushed them back to their initial positions. The Ukrainians have some success, or Bakhmuts, which if you remember the Russians, it took them only nine months to take that town. The Ukrainians are chipping away at that, particularly around the town. They're not going into the town. They're going in the south and the north with the idea of ultimately surrounding it. So this war is going, it's brutal. I always like to remind you there are young kids, 18-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds fighting in this battlefield, both Ukrainians and Russians. Ukrainians fighting for their homeland, fighting for their freedom and liberty, the Russians fighting because I think they have no choice. They're fighting because Vladimir Putin told them to fight, some of them are committed, most of them are not. But they are there, they are dying, they are being maimed. I mean, it's hard to exaggerate the horrors of war. War is just horrific, horrific, primarily for the troops on the ground. And this is going to grind on for a while until the Ukrainians find a point of weakness in the Russian defenses and I think plow through it. At some point, I think this can move pretty quickly for the Ukrainians, but they have to find their weak point. They have to cut off the supply chains. They have to be able to isolate certain Russian units. And then I think because the Russians are not very motivated, there's a good chance the Russian army or parts of the Russian army collapse. In the meantime, Russia is spending a lot of resources on attacking the grain exporting facilities in Odessa and along the Danube River to prevent the Ukrainians from shipping out grain that they are still growing during this war. One to drain revenue from the Ukrainians, but be just to make this war more horrific for the rest of the world. Now, what's problematic for Russia is that the largest importer of Ukrainian grain is China, nominally an ally of the Russians. China is putting pressure on the Russians to stop because they need the grain from Ukraine. So it's complicated. Africa, where Russia has a lot of interest in through the Wagner Group and others, we've talked about this in the past, is also a huge consumer of Ukrainian grain. They are putting a lot of pressure on Russia to stop this. So at the same time, Ukraine is using drone technology to attack Russia, to attack Crimea, number of bombings in Crimea itself, number of bombings in Russia itself. And over the last week or so, two attacks inside Moscow on office towers in Moscow for supposedly military targets, but on office towers in Moscow kind of bringing the war home to the Russians. So a lot of people shooting at each other from a distance on the ground where the soldiers are really suffering. Very, you know, slow movements and a lot of bloodshed. Russia in the meantime has passed a new bill in its legislature to extend the ability to conscript new soldiers for military service. It used to be that between the ages of 18 and 27, you were eligible for conscription and you could be mobilized. And if you made it to 28, you were out. You didn't have to. And this goes back, I think, to the Soviet era. They've just extended that to 18 to 30. So they've added three years at the top of the range. A lot of Russians are unhappy about that. It doesn't mean that everybody ages 18 to 30 is going to be constricted, but it means you could be, and you don't know if you will or you won't. So until you get to 31, you could be. And of course this makes future mobilization and expansion of the Russian army easier. At the same time, this new legislation is giving Russian local authorities, governors of the different states in Russia, the ability to mobilize and create their own military formations, their own kind of brigades that they can deploy both for internal security but also deploy to the front, giving a little bit of autonomy to create militias, if you will, at a local level. Now, some places already have that, the Chechnya's and so on, but maybe the way in which they're going to replace Wagner is by creating these more regional focused. The Russian government is also advertising in Kazakhstan, trying to encourage Kazakhs. A different country, it's not part of Russia. Used to be part of the Soviet Union, but in Kazakhstan there are three million Russians, some of them left Russia to avoid being conscripted, but some of them just ethnic Russians who live in Kazakhstan. Russia is spending resources in Kazakhstan media to advertise and to try to get Kazakhs to volunteer to the Russian army, to come work as mercenaries basically. They're offering them $5,000, which is a lot of money in that part of the world, signing bonuses $2,000 a month, salaries, and they're promising not to deploy them to Ukraine, but to deploy them to the Eastern Russia, basically Siberia, and that will free up troops that today are in Eastern Russia to be able to fight in Ukraine. Of course, Eastern Russia is important because that's a very, very long border with China and over disputed territories that China would love to get back one day. So again, challenges and problems at the same time. So Russia is struggling. It's struggling to mobilize in our forces. It's trying to set up an infrastructure to be able to mobilize more to get more troops. It's trying to recruit people from outside. And then more broadly, after a couple of years or a year and a half at war, there are real challenges economically, domestically. There are a lot of conflicts within the Russian leadership among the oligarchs, in the Russian media, among the different military bloggers. There's just a lot of conflict, which you'd expect given all this war and the nature of what's going on. So a lot of economic and cultural and just conflicts within Russia. And maybe a good illustration for this. The only reason I'm using this is an illustration, because at the beginning of the war, certainly a month or two into the war, there was a lot of talk about how, oh, Russia economy is doing great. Look at the rubble. The rubble is the strongest it's ever been against the dollar. Now my argument is and has been that that was manipulated by the Russian central bank. So since the rubble is supposed to be a symbol of how well the Russian economy is doing, I figured I'd show you how the rubble is doing. Let's take a look at the rubble. That is the rubble. Now that big spike. Now this is the dollar. So going up means the dollar is getting stronger vis-a-vis the rubble. Going up, any upward trend means the rubble is going down in value. This is what happened when the war was launched. The rubble collapsed versus the dollar because everybody was very pessimistic about the Russian economy. The Russian central bank then stepped in and boosted by buying up rubbles, boosted the value of the dollar to what you see here at 50, you know, sometime in the middle of 2020, I think 2022, I think that's in June. And that shows you, wow, the rubble is the strongest ever. Maybe Russia is doing really, really well in the war. Well, since then, what you've seen is the rubble is slowly declined in value. So today, at 94.75 rubles to the dollar, the rubble is its weakest ever been with the exception of this crazy period right after the war was launched. The Russian economy is really, really weak. You know, and the rubles, the rubles purchasing power in dollars is very, very weak. And this is symbolic of really the collapse of the Russian economy. This period where the Russia rubble was very strong is just a reflection of manipulation by the central bank. Since then, it is weakened systematically, and I wouldn't be surprised if it continues to weaken again. If you look at the tenure graph, you can see that the rubble is dramatically, is the weakest it's ever been. And you can take this graph 25 years and you can see that even further. It's the weakest it's ever been with the exception of that few weeks right after the war. So this is right after the war. You can see that cross hairs and this is where it is today. And it's nowhere near at 94 to the dollar. This is not good. 68 in 2014. 68 somewhere here in 2014. And now it's at 94, 95. All right. That's quickly on Russia. Not good for Russia, but Ukraine is struggling. This is not great news in terms of Ukraine. All right. What else? Najya, another quick update. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but Najya, again, this country, actually next time we talk about Najya, I'll put up a map. I should really put up a map. So Najya, we've got a coup there. We've got the military in control. U.S. is troubled by this. France is even more troubled by this. France has a lot of interest in that region of the world. The coup also strengthens the Islamic ISIS, the Islamic State. It also strengthens al-Qaeda in that part of Africa. So it strengthens the Islamists. The United States won't call it a coup because if they call it a coup, they'll have to stop working with the Niger military, which is bizarre. They should stop immediately. Why are they working with them? If the U.S. views the Islamists and Najya as a threat, bomb them into oblivion, why are we working with the Niger military? The ones who did the coup, right? The French have stopped working in the region. The French are also very concerned about the Islamist activities there, and they've stopped working because of this coup. Najya Malai and Bukino Faso, another country in this part of Africa, all countries that have experienced coups lately, they are forming kind of a coup coalition. The rest of African nations, particularly to the west, Nigeria and others to the west on the Atlantic Ocean coast, are threatening to militarily intervene, and to militarily intervene to return the so-called legitimate government over there. So, yeah, I mean, there is war brewing in this part of Africa. There's always war brewing in Africa, sadly, but this could be significant. And again, the only reason this is particularly relevant for America and for Europe, I think, is because war in this part of Africa will only embolden and only strengthen the Islamists. And, you know, Islamic State has lost the territory it had in Iraq and Syria. It now might establish itself, it's trying to establish itself in this part of Africa, which would be, I think, bad for all of us in terms of their ability to plan and then execute terrorist activities against the west. All right, I'll keep an eye on Africa for you and let you know if anything develops. Finally, just some good news in terms of the United States, if you're a traveler. It turns out that Americans are traveling a lot, but this summer they're mostly traveling overseas. So if you're trying to book tickets to Europe, prices are through the roof. I was just looking at a one-way ticket from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Madrid, $11,000. I mean, in business, sorry, in business. But that's insane, right, even for business class. Tickets generally overseas and planes are packed. It turns out the demand for travel inside the United States has dropped, significantly dropped. And as a consequence, airlines are cutting prices. So the good news is, if you're planning a trip, now's maybe the time to buy because airlines, according to this headline in Bloomberg, are slashing prices to convince Americans to vacation closer to home. They're a little late for summer vacations as kids are already returning to school, I think next week or the week after that. But part of the problem is that because of remote work, business travel has not returned. And therefore, planes are not for domestically. So challenging time for the airports, but maybe an opportunity for all of you if you want to go out there and travel. Just a few quickies, quick stories. It's just a funny one, right? Dianne Feinstein, you know Dianne Feinstein? Senator, senior senator from the state of California, just turned 90 years old has turned over power of attorney to her daughter because she's too old to make decisions for herself. And yet, she has not resigned her position as U.S. senator and still participating, if you can call it participating, given that by all a counter mind is gone, in votes and in committee sessions in the Senate. I mean, what the hell? So we've got a 90 year old Dianne Feinstein who cannot handle her own affairs managing your affairs, my affairs making votes on this. This is absurd. I think senators should have to have every three months some kind of test, a cognition test to see if they're qualified or not. I think they will never pass that because the fear would be that none of them would actually qualify. If it was a sanity and cognition test. Maybe the president of the United States should have one too. Maybe we should have age restrictions. Maybe at 80, maybe at 80, you should have to quit. I think it's time because people are living so long and because mental, we know that mentally you're just not a sharp. Even 90 year olds were sharp and not as sharp as they were when they were 60. They just not. Even if you stay in perfect shape and everything, there's a certain decay. And there should be an age restriction. If you're going to be in decision making, I think board of directors have it. We at the institute have an age restriction on our board of directors. And it's easier to do that than what somebody deteriorate and have to ask them to leave the board because they're no longer contributing or the distraction because they're not focused. I mean, this is certainly true in the Senate, certainly true in the president. So we need just an age restriction. And yeah, so Diane Vanstein needs to go. I mean, she needed to go a long time ago for other reasons, but she needs to go. Just another mainstream media stupid story, a quick one. Well, not stupid story. Just the hypocrisy and the ridiculousness. So the whole Antibiden thing, the Antibiden story that forever mainstream media was ignoring it and pretended it wasn't there and pretending it didn't exist and pretending he wasn't guilty of anything. And then pretended he didn't get money from Ukraine and didn't get money from Trita. Well, now it's obvious that he got money from Ukraine and he got money from Trita. It's all documented. It's all proven. We've got it all. And then the mainstream media ignored the fact that, okay, so it's under Biden. Who cares? It doesn't matter. Well, they ignored the fact that Joe Biden was somehow involved, you know, taking these phone calls in front. And so where did I actually lost the citation for this? Where's the citation for this? Anyway, a headline in the New York Times recently was like, let's see, it's here. Yes, this is the New York Times, you know, from the New York Times. It has long been known that the elder Mr. Biden at times interacted with his son's business partners. Well, maybe it's well known, but you guys at the New York Times have been denying it for months and months and months. And now you stick a sentence like that into a story pretending that this is kind of obvious and you knew it all along. I mean, again, these are the kind of things that cause people to distrust the mainstream media. Spain is probably heading to a new election. Looks like neither left nor right can form a coalition. It's basically the parliament right now is split even. You take all the coalition parties of the left and all the coalition parties of the right, it's going to be almost impossible to form a government. We're probably looking at additional and additional election. All right, let's do that. Let's finish there and close off there. And then, wow, go to the Super Chat. And today we managed to exceed by quite a bit our goal for the day very, very quickly. So thank you guys to all the Super Chatters for doing this. Let's start with Ryan. Ryan says, just return for an amazing trip to Tel Aviv and Athens. Wow. Missed a lot of live shows, but I'm catching up. I finally finished Atlas Shrugged and as expected, phenomenal. Gold's radio broadcast and Rand's ability to predict the state of 2023 culture is chilling. Wow, so glad you finally finished Atlas Shrugged. That's great to hear people who are reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time who are listeners. I'm glad you enjoyed Tel Aviv and Athens. I mean, Tel Aviv and Athens is a great, it's a great contract. I assume you wasn't Jerusalem and so a little bit of Israel, not just Tel Aviv, but maybe I'm assuming too much. But yeah, that's a fantastic vacation. Colleen says, please keep doing these shows so much value and to not have to follow the news. I appreciate that Colleen. Thank you and thank you for the $100 that certainly helps the motivation. So yeah, guys, days like this where we raise basically $350 is certainly motivating me to continue. Rob says from Australia, hi, Iran. It's 2 a.m. in Sydney and I can't sleep. Wanted to give a plug for the INREN Institute's first official visit to Australia. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Second official visit to Australia. Not first. I was in Australia officially for the INREN Institute. I gave a talk, I attended the Montpelerin Society meeting in Sydney and gave a talk at the local objectivist group in Sydney. I can't remember that was. 15 years, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, 20, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was 2010. So 13 years ago, 2010 or 2011. Anyway, so the second official visit. Give me credit. Very exciting. Now, Tal is doing a whole Australia tour. So good for him. Very excited for Tal's funny lecture and tour. He's doing a bunch of different talks in Australia. This is very exciting. I'm hoping all Aussie objectivists can come along. I hope so too. The details on the INREN website. So if you're in Australia, listen to this. Go see Tal. A tour of Australia is giving multiple talks in multiple cities. He's going all the way, I think to the west, to Perth. He's doing Melbourne and Sydney and I'm not sure where else. But yeah, this is fantastic. Really excited to see growth in objectivism and support for the Institute in Australia. And if you like Tal, you should invite me. You know, as I always say, I go where I'm invited. So I'd love to visit Australia again and maybe we can do something in New Zealand too. I love New Zealand as well. Alright, thanks Rob. Really appreciate the support. Thank you. Okay, Ryan says, like the show, trade value for value, support YBS. Yes, thank you Ryan for the pitch. Michael says, the great prison, the great prison people live in is the fear of what other people think. Yes, I think people do kind of live in a self created prison that limits them, you know, in terms of what other people are thinking. Oh, the tour. The tour in Australia is Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. Great. Remind Tal to say hello to my friends at Perth. We've got a number of people at Perth who I've interacted with in the past. There's a great free market think tank in Perth. They're really good guys. Let's see, Michael says, the less conceptual the population, the more narcissistic and conspiratorial people become. Well, certainly conspiratorial, because conspiracies are a search for explanation. I mean, people are eager to explain the world, to have reasons, to know cause and effect. And religion provided them with that for a very long time, for a long time. And they're still looking, right? They're still, religion is of course the biggest conspiracy theory ever. And they're still looking and conspiracy theories fill in as religion becomes less important in people's lives. They still need that explanation. They're not conceptual enough to embrace a philosophy. So they look for superficial, simple, conspiratorial explanations for everything. And that's where irrational conspiracy theories come from. So it's a search for explanation by a less conceptual audience. Michael says, freedom from consequences isn't real freedom. Well, it depends what you mean by the concept of freedom. You have to be careful how you use the term freedom. As a political, I mean, there is no such thing in the end of the day of freedom from consequences. There are always consequences. But whether you're using freedom as a political concept or not. All right, Michael also says, academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love. Not how it should be, but often how it is. Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is for love. Not bad, Michael. Do you think boom airlines will radically transform air travel and reduce prices dramatically over time? Well, I don't know if it's going to reduce prices. It'll probably increase prices, particularly for the boom travel. I do think it has the potential to radicalize. I do think it has the potential to create real competition in the supersonic space. If they can prove its viability, if they can prove its profitability, they also have to first build the first plane. And then if they can combine their technology with NASA's technology, which NASA has now, technology that's ultrasonic, but where there's no supersonic boom, that there's no noise. If they can combine those two technologies, not in version one, the first version is going to still have the boom. But maybe in version two, ultimately, I think we're going to have supersonic travel that is for long distances is going to be amassed. I mean, if you can cut New York to London by half, L.A. to London by, well, you know, by even more than half. If you can, you know, L.A. to Tokyo, L.A. to Bangkok. I mean, wow, I mean, you just then shrink the world even more, make travel even easier. It's huge. It's huge for people like me who travel a lot. Now, by the time this comes out, who knows? But well, if the first one is in play in 2030, I definitely intend to fly on a boom plane when they're out. You know, it's worth splurging to have that experience once in life. Hopefully the prices are low enough. And I think American Airlines is going to get them. Maybe I can use miles and get a ticket on them. I definitely plan to use boom jets to the extent that I can to travel long distances. So I hate just sitting in airplanes for long distances. If I could get to London in three, three and a half hours, it really changes things. It makes going to London on a day trip possible. What I could do, that's less than what it takes me to get to New York. So, you know, you could go for a night and you can avoid the jet lag. You can go, you know, anyway, it's amazing. So I'm a huge, huge fan and hope that it's really successful. All right. I've got to go teach a class at ARU. I will see you all tomorrow. We've got a show at three o'clock. No show tonight. A show tomorrow at 3 p.m. So join us then. Join us then. And yeah, have a fantastic weekend, everybody. Bye.