 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show. Whoops, we need video. I hope everybody's had a fantastic Thanksgiving and you had a great meal yesterday. And so family, friends, whatever it is you happen to do on Thanksgiving. We had a fantastic meal yesterday at the Best Restaurant in Puerto Rico. And it was, yeah, it was really good. Let's see, we have a bunch of stories to talk about today. There will be a show tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. Not sure yet exactly what the content will be. We'll get to that and we will cover it. And I will let you know later today if you subscribe. Don't forget to subscribe to the show if you're not subscribed, but yet please subscribe to Iran Brook Show on YouTube. You can also get it on any podcasting app. So you can use the podcasts and just listen to it on a podcast. Or on Spreaker, which is the app that I used for the podcasting. Let's see, any other housekeeping? I don't really think so. I think we're good. There will be a show tomorrow at 2 p.m. East Coast time. Again, topic to be determined. If you have ideas for topics, happy to hear them. And if you want to sponsor a topic, it's a thousand bucks and you get to decide what topic I cover. I'm looking for a few sponsors. It would be great before the end of the month, before the end of the year. That would be great. I'm also, by the way, looking for anybody who wants to do a match on New Year's Eve. I'll be doing a show New Year's Eve, basically from 2 p.m. East Coast time until 5 p.m. East Coast time, three hours probably. And, oh, Andrew says there's an AMA tomorrow. All right, there's an AMA tomorrow. I don't need to come up with a topic. That makes it easy. That's two this month. I think because I didn't do one last month. So, yes, I'm looking for anybody who's interested to do a match. Let's make it not less than $1,000. Anything more than $1,000 that you would like to contribute as a match for what we raise on New Year's Eve, let me know. Last year, I had somebody doing $10,000. That was phenomenal. We'll see if we get something similar this year, if not not. But in any case, I will be doing a big fundraising show on December 31st, starting at 2 p.m. East Coast time, mostly taking your questions, but it will be kind of a year in review. It's been quite a year. So, it'll be a year in review show on the 31st of the year. Let's jump right in. I will remind everybody, INRAN Institute is a sponsor. They've got a big event on the 28th, which is next week, celebrating the Fountainhead and talking about all the ways in which the Fountainhead is being distributed to young people and all the ways in which they get access to it and all the programs the institute engages in getting people to read INRAN's novels. So, you can attend that. In order to do that, go to INRAN.org. INRAN.org. Start here and you can sign up for the event next week on the 28th. Don't miss it. All right. Let's see. Let's start with the breaking news. It's happening as we speak. 13 Israelis have just been released by Hamas and they just arrived in Israel. So, congratulations to them. Of course, to their families and to everybody who's been worried sick about them for the last month and a half. I mean, there's a big sigh of relief to see these people back home. Unfortunately, some of them are back home with no family because the family was murdered on October 7th. In addition to 13 Israelis, 10 citizens of Thailand and one citizen of the Philippines. I haven't seen any breakdown on men, women, ages and stuff, but these are guest workers in Israel that were working in the south of Israel and were taking hostage. By the way, I think it was 36 Thai citizens were murdered on October 7th. Just in this orgy of slaughter and mayhem and barbarism that took place, it wasn't even just Jews who got killed. It was anybody who worked for Jews, including Arabs, Muslims, a number of Muslims who were there, happened to be there, were working there in just communities were killed on October 7th. Of the 13 that were released, let's see, five of them are older women, ranging in ages I see here from 72 to 85, which is surprising because I thought it would be mainly children and mothers, but it looks like they decided maybe it's just easier for them to older people, less medical care, less hassle for them, I don't know. But anyway, we got, no, 78 to 85, so 72 to 85. So 72 to 85 year olds, six of them were released. We had four children, one of them aged two, another one aged four, together with what looks like their mother, aged 34, and then a girl aged six who was released with her mother, aged 45, and another boy aged nine released with his mother, 54. I mean, just give you a sense of who was kidnapped, right? I mean, they literally took babies, two year olds. We're still waiting, I guess, for the baby. There's a nine month old to be released. Maybe that'll be tomorrow or the day after. This is just the first batch of hostages to be released. There will be more over the next few days, a total supposedly over the four days of 50, with potentially more after that. Israel has released, I think, 39 women and teenagers as part of this, and they're releasing them to families and primarily the West Bank. I think, again, as we speak, that is happening. Ed reminds me there's a baby born in captivity, where's that baby? Hamas is just drawing them out, drawing this out. It gives them more cards, it gives them... And by the way, the Thai citizens that were released is primarily a result of the Thai governments negotiating heavily, and really from October 8th, I think, with the Iranian government, I don't know if Thailand has any leverage on Iran. I have no idea what is going on there, but the Thai government went directly to the Iranian government to negotiate this. There's a lot of Thai families that must be super relieved. Most of these captives were probably women and probably young, relatively young in the 20s, who come to Israel and work and send money home. And I think there's still 20-plus more Thai citizens, and maybe others from Southeast Asia, who are still being held by Hamas. So this was just, again, the first batch, and you got to feel just a horror of those families in Thailand, as well as the families in Israel who still haven't had their loved ones released. What else is there? We've got a ceasefire. It'll go on for four days so far. The ceasefire is holding. I think Hamas will hold the ceasefire. I don't think they'll violate it. They've got every incentive, basically, to do this. It's an opportunity for them to regroup, to get a breather. A lot of supplies are coming in to Gaza. Hundreds of vehicles with supplies are bringing in supplies into Gaza. One wonders how many of the most are smuggling weapons, but certainly the Hamas fighters themselves could benefit from the food and the oil and everything else that's being brought in. Maybe they'll even let some of the other Gaza civilians get some of those. So they will have four days to regroup. There is the potential that this will drag out for longer, and I'm going to guess that it will drag out for longer because Hamas have a clear incentive to drag this out as long as they can. If Hamas releases 10 prisoners every day, 10 hostages every day, Israel is committed to extending one day for every 10 that's being released. My guess is Hamas will do whatever it can to extend this as long as possible. Hamas is... Hamas, once the state stop, they want Israel to basically give in. They want a, quote, negotiated settlement. They want to be perceived as the bringers of peace. And they have every incentive to continue to drag out the ceasefire as long as possible. Also, they know, as I know, as you know, as everybody in the world knows, but the Israeli government denies this ceasefire is slowing the Israeli military's momentum. It reduces the probability that the job will get done ever, or at least in this round. And it, again, gives Hamas an opportunity to regroup and to set more booby traps. And ultimately, the cost of the ceasefire will be in the lives of Israeli soldiers in the weeks and months to come, days and weeks to come. All right, so I've talked about the ceasefire before, so there's no point in me repeating too much of what I think about this moral travesty. My focus here is primarily on, look, in spite of the moral travesty, we have to all recognize and I recognize that it is wonderful that these people got to be freed from the clutches of Hamas. It is wonderful that they got to be reunited with their families. So, you know, you cannot but be happy for them, even whilst realizing that strategically having the ceasefire and releasing these hostages is an unmitigated disaster. All right, just people who gave some stickers. I want to thank Lewis, thank you. Stephen Hopper, thank you. Volta, thank you. Danielle, Sosa, $100. Really, really, really thank you. That's very generous. And Jonathan Honing, thank you. Thanks to all of you guys for supporting the show and making all of this possible and getting us very close to our target. So hopefully it won't be too hard to get there today. All right, we'll give the war a breather for today. I'm sure we'll have a lot more to say. I'll have a lot more to say about it next week when we resume the show on, when we resume the show on news, the news roundups starting on Monday. All right, let's see. Yeah, I mean, we talked about the Dutch elections a little bit before the day they were happening where it looked like Giet Wilders, I think I'm pronouncing that right, maybe better than I did yesterday, the other day, was going to do a lot better than expected. Well, it turned out he did a lot better than expected. He actually, his political party won a majority, not a majority. He won the most votes of any political party in parliament. It will have close to 25%, I think, of all the seats in the new parliament. It will still need the support of significant other political parties in order to form a government, but he is the big winner. And I think a number of lessons from this, I think the big question is why, and I think a big cause of this is Hamas and the response to Hamas. But also, what does he stand for? In particular, we know he's anti-immigration and we know he hates Islam. But what's his political agenda? What is his economic agenda? Because I think Giet Wilders is very much, and now represents in Europe one of the many faces of the new rights. We've got Orban in Hungary. We can talk about him and what he represents, both economically, socially, culturally, and everything else. I mean, a complete disaster, in my view. We've got the new leaders of Slovakia that represent kind of a similar to Orban, but a little different in terms of their approach to the new right. We've got Miloni in Italy, which has been a somewhat pleasant surprise, relatively speaking to expectations. But she represents another face of the new right. And then we'll see what happens in the rest of Europe as these elections happen. Spain has avoided a right-wing government by a very, very close margin, and through the left basically selling its soul to separatist parties. But the new right in Germany, the German election next year, are going to be huge, huge, humongous for the future of Europe and the political profile of Europe. So I want to talk a little bit about Goethe Winder's economics and not just his view of Islam. But first, why did he get so many votes? Why did he win, and why was this a surprise? And I'm not an expert on Dutch politics, so this is at least somewhat of a guess for me. So take it for what it's worth. I'm not presenting myself here as an expert. But it seems to me, if you're sitting in Europe and you're seeing what's going on in Israel, and then you see literally hundreds of thousands of people come out into the streets, led by Muslims, but also incorporating European leftists, all supporting Hamas, all promoting Hamas and by doing so promoting Jihad, by doing so promoting Sharia law, by doing so threatening the very foundations of European society and European culture, then this becomes immigration, which is always an issue, becomes now a much bigger issue. Attitudes towards Islam become a much bigger issue. Now, Remo in the Netherlands tells me it's not the issue. But anyway, I'm going to go with this because I think whether they know it or not, all the political parties that are anti-Islam are benefiting from the pro Hamas movement in Europe. All of them. And again, we'll get to doubling in a little bit. You're going to elect an anti-Islam candidate. You're going to elect an anti-Islam candidate. And a lot of people are going to move to the right if the threat of Islam is now more evident and more real and more in your face, because people are actually literally going out in the streets and trying to make it the number one issue from the other side. So I think that had a big part of it. No, I don't think Git is pro-civilization. I think he's anti-Islam. I don't think he's pro-civilization. So let's look a little bit about what Git actually stands for beyond being anti-immigration and anti-Islam, which he is. Although even there he has said now that he's going to moderate his views because he needs to form a coalition. So he's going to moderate his views on Islam and on immigration. So let's look at what he thinks about economics. So one of the good things that the Netherlands have done over the last few years is they have domestically, they have put together a massive reform package for their pension system. It's actually the Europeans largest pension system. I guess because pensions in Holland are all centralized in a way that they're not centralized in the rest of Europe. So this pension system, what they've done is they've moved the pension system from a defined benefits pension system. Basically says you put this money in and these are the benefits we promise you, which I believe is an unbelievably corrupt system, particularly for public pension systems. And it is destructive, it's corrupt, and it leads ultimately to bankruptcy, or what it really leads to is the massive taxpayer bailouts of the pension system. And that happens everywhere all the time. You look at California, you look at some of the corporate pension systems that would define benefits. Basically in the United States, in the private sector, everything is moving to define contributions. That is, you contribute, it's invested whatever you have at the end of the day, that's yours. You don't get any promises in terms of what you're going to get at the end. And that's exactly how a pension plan should be. Now granted, there shouldn't be these massive publicly run pension plans. But if there's going to be one, much healthier, much healthier to have a defined contribution, the defined benefit just leads to corruption, it leads to politicians raising the benefits all the time because they will never have to pay them its future generations and then they raise taxes to cover the deficits. It's an unbelievably corrupt system. So Holland has shifted to a defined contribution system which is really, really, really good. Now as you can imagine, if you're a certain inclination and set of beliefs in Holland, then you're against this. The defined benefits are nice. You put it in the work and the government guarantees you a particular pension. It's very socialist, it's very European, and it's very corrupt, but a lot of people love it. And indeed, Gert Wilder's political party wants to reverse the reform. They want to undo it. They want to go back to the fine benefits. This reform has just passed. It's just become law. So I think that this could be part of the retraction. I don't know, but it could be part of the retraction. Now there's another party called the New Social Contract Party, which is a newcomer and it finished fourth, I think, but it is going to be crucial to forming any kind of coalition. It wants that people will get a choice between defined benefit and defined contribution. But both of these parties want to undo this major positive economic reform in the Netherlands. What else does Gert Wilder want? Well, he wants a new tax, or higher taxes, on banks. And that, again, would be a disaster. Netherlands has been a financial superhouse, superpower for hundreds of years. It has two significant banks that also do insurance and do a bunch of different things. ING and ABN AMRO, both global banks with substantial presence. This stock, of course, went down when he won, when he was announced that he was a winner. But he is anti-banks, taxes on banks. There's also talk about him wanting to tax windfall profits that these banks have generated from higher interest rates. And then finally, what about government spending? Netherlands is relatively speaking, pre-at least COVID, had a relatively, you know, a government that spent relative to other European countries less than most. Last government expanded spending dramatically. Kurt Wilders is expected to continue spending money like crazy. He's also against profits in health care. So when you hear about, and this is the funny thing about calling these guys far right and then calling Millay in Argentina far right, and we'll talk about Millay in a minute, because yes, these people are far right, but this is why right doesn't mean anything anymore. They're far right in their anti-migration. They're far right in anti-Slam. They're far right in the sense that Kurt Wilders wants theoretically out of the EU, but he won't do anything. He wants a referendum, but he won't do it. Remo says he also wants to raise the minimum wage. So he wants to abolish pocket payments in health care. So he wants it to be completely socialized. The government pays every last dime. So these people are right-wing in terms of their nationalism and their left-wing, radical left-wing, when it comes to economics. This is not a step forward. This is a massive step backwards. This is a step backwards to national socialism, nationalism and socialism. That's what these people want. That's what Kurt Wilders is. This is not a good guy. This is not something to be celebrated. This is an unmitigated disaster, and that political parties like his left on economics, dramatically left on economics. And dramatically right on social issues. So what does right mean? Right what? Right means who? Right means where? They're all collectivists. They're all power-hungry collectivists. In that sense, they're all on that part of the political side, the collectivist part of the political side. The only thing that matters from a perspective of meaningful political spectrum is individualism. Now, there is a particular type of right-wing collectivism versus left-wing collectivism. The right-wing collectivism tends towards nationalism, and in this case anti-immigration, anti-Slam. And the left-wing collectivists tend towards CRT and identity politics and other. Of course, the right-wing collectivism also embays identity politics, just a flip of the identity politics of the left. But left, right, they're all anti-liberty. They're all anti-freedom. They're all anti-individualism. He's not every national socialist as a Nazi. But the national socialist, the nationalist, and the socialist. That's just the reality. And that's uniformly across these right-wing political parties in Europe. The national socialist political parties. Not in the sense that they are Nazis with everything associated with the Nazis, but in the sense that they combine what is associated in people's minds with the right i.e. nationalism with everything that goes along with it. Together with socialist economic policies. Socialist economic policies. And if you take national socialism to be affiliated with the Nazis and think that I'm trying to imply that they are Nazis, that's your problem. But it is true that they're on the same side of whatever political spectrum you want to have. They're on that side of right-wing collectivism. Which at the end of that spectrum of right-wing collectivism are the Nazis. Just like at the end of the spectrum of the left-wing collectivism are the communists. That's reality. And if you don't like the reality, tough. All right, so it's going to be interesting to see what happens here. Of course, Kurt Wilders does not have a majority. He's going to have to compromise. The second largest party is at the third largest party. The party that is governing today, which is a right-of-center political party run by an immigrant from Turkey. Or maybe a parent's way, an immigrant from Turkey, but originally from Turkey, has basically said that the biggest center-right party, they basically said that they would not join a good-vildered, dominated coalition. Although they might vote for the government in parliament, they won't actually sit in the government with him. So his only other coalition party is a new social contract, which is another right-of-center political party, which is supposed to be very autocratic. We just want good policies. We don't care the right-left. Again, all the BS that politicians feed us. So we'll see what kind of negotiations. Last time it took 299 days from the election until the forming of a government in the Netherlands. So these processes take a long time, a lot of negotiation, a lot of hand-wringing, a lot of arm-twisting. And it will be interesting to see what kind of government comes at the end of it. But this is not something to celebrate. Unlike Millet, which we'll get to in a little bit, this is not worth celebrating. And even Millet, as we'll see, is already showing worrisome signs. All right, that was Dutch. Let's go quickly to Dublin. Yesterday in Dublin, there was a tragic attack by an immigrant Muslim in a school where he stabbed three kids and two teachers. One of the kids is in critical condition in hospital. Luckily, nobody has died yet of those wounds, but three kids in hospital or one kid is in critical condition. Immediately after the news came out and it was rumored that it was a Muslim who committed the crime, about 500. I don't know. It's hard to tell what the numbers are. But several hundred, maybe several thousands, hard to tell. Irish men, primarily men, I think it was, went out into the streets and basically rioted. They burnt down a hotel that had been used to house asylum seekers in Ireland. They burnt cars. They rioted. They were incredibly disruptive. They took over the streets. They damaged a number of vehicles. They torched a bus. And they damaged 13 properties in addition to the hotel. At some point, the police were having a very hard time controlling this. And there were some rumors that they called in the military. I don't think the military actually was used. But it got pretty dicey and pretty unpleasant in Dublin. A beautiful city, by the way, last night. I think 36 people were arrested in jail. And there is a call now from these demonstrators or these rioters and others. There was a call to eliminate or reduce immigration again. So while I know RIMO is minimizing the role of the pro-Hamas protests, I think that's a mistake. I think all over Europe, and this is a broader issue, maybe I'll do a show on this tonight. And this is the broader issue that I think all the Muslims do when they go out and they demonstrate and they support Hamas, all they do is they incite or awaken, if you will, the nationalist tendencies in many of these European countries. All they do is ignite a fire that will ultimately consume them. It's still small because the terrorist attack happened in Israel. It didn't happen in Europe. But imagine if a terrorist attack, if a terrorist attacks, start happening now in Europe. I mean, when they did 10 years ago, when ISIS ran amok in Europe, these right-wing parties were just awakening. Now they're well-established. Now the networks of people opposed to Islam in Europe is dramatic and significant. If there was a string of terrorist attacks in Europe now, I think the response would be a lot more brutal than it was, what is it, sevens, eight, 10 years ago when ISIS and al-Qaeda are going all the way back to the bombing in the British subway. They will awaken the Europeans. They will awaken European nationalism. They will awaken the worst in European nationalism. And they will be its victims. So beware Muslims. You might regret all of this. All right, finally, so what do we do? What do we do about Mele? I mean, this is, so Mele ran on a very, very radical, very, very radical economic agenda. He ran an economic agenda that included the shutting down of the central bank, the dollarization of the entire economy, the shutting down of most government ministries and the slashing, dramatic slashing of government spending, the reduction of capital, the elimination of capital controls, the elimination of restrictions on importation and exports and all of that. Now, that is a difficult agenda to pass. This is not going to be easy. And there is going to be pain. There is literally going to be pain. You know, before you can rise, there will be a decline, just dollarization. If you dollarize tomorrow, initially Argentinians would all be poorer because the person would have to adjust to its real value versus the dollar, which is a lot less than what it is right now. They would have a lot fewer dollars than they think they do. It is interesting. And I don't know if you know this. Argentinians have more cash, dollars in cash, than any country in the world outside the United States. Argentinians as individuals have more cash, literally cash dollars, than any place outside of the United States. And indeed, per capita, they have more cash than Americans do, on average, for an average person. But the government has no dollars. So how do you dollarize? You have to convert the pesos into dollars. But for that, you need dollars. For that, you need to borrow money because you don't have them. Who's going to lend you the dollars to be able to dollarize your economy? It's not clear there's anybody out there willing to do that. As it is, Argentina owns tens of billions of dollars in dollar-denominated debt to the IMF and to other debt holders, which it cannot pay. So how's it going to get the dollars to dollarize its economy? So everything Millay wants to do, cut government spending, cut the bureaucracy. Okay, that's great. Let's say you fire 50% of all the people who work for the government, which I am 100% for. You have to realize that suddenly you've got hundreds of thousands of people, and it is hundreds of thousands, who have no employment. Because it's not like the Argentinian economy is creating jobs. So the sequence in which you do this is super important. The sequence in which you liberalize your economy is super important. What you liberalize first, what you liberalize last, who you let go of first, who you let go of last, when you dollarize. How do you get enough dollars to dollarize? All of this is crucial and super difficult, super complicated, and the reality is that it will result in economic pain for Argentinians when they start it. There's just no way around that. Which means you need to have strong leadership that is willing to tell the Argentinians what's happening, why it's happening, what the pain they're feeling is from, why they're going to recover, and things are going to get much, much better once they do recover. Now, Millay knows this. So one of the things he is doing is he is teaming up with the center right in Argentina, represented by Marcos Macri, who was the president six years ago, whatever, five years ago, who was a complete failure, but was a center right. President, everybody was very excited when he got elected because he was a fan of the fountain head. He had read the fountain head. He was an Iron Man fan. He was going to change Argentina completely, and then he didn't. And then he didn't. All right. So Big Ed says he's shutting down the central bank and allowing fecons he used over and over. He said this. No, he's not. He's not even going to do that. He's not going to dollarize, and he's not even going to do that. We're going to get to that in a minute. There's no way. There has to be a currency that is used to paying taxes. The government, it will still be a massive economic power. He is, if he does anything, he will dollarize. There's no question about that. It's what he's actually said. And he will allow other currencies in the economy, you know, whatever the market wants. But he will take all the pesos that exist today and convert them into dollars first. That was the plan that's always been the plan. But maybe it's not anymore. Because what should worry all of us is that Maqri is marginalizing the key economists that were his advisors during the campaign. He's marginalizing the people who are the real radicals who really want to bring about a free market in Argentina. He's marginalizing his dollarization guru, the guy who wants to close down the central bank and to dollarize the economy, who is Emilio Ocampo. Basically, this morning, he distanced himself from Emilio. And then another major economic force in this campaign that was for these big moves towards liberalizing the economy, Carlos Rodriguez, announced on Twitter this morning that he was departing the Milay program. Of course, they're expecting to convert pesos. Milay himself said that he was looking somebody to lend him enough money so he could do it. God, you know, the Batarians have no conception of what economics is really about and how economics actually works or what these people say. They read into it what they want to read into it. In their place, Milay has created an economic team to lead the transition. And then once he becomes president, the economic team is going to be led by Luis Caputo and Damien Riedel, who are two former Wall Street veterans. That's not a good sign. And they both, this is a worse sign, held key post during Macri's presidency from 2015 to 2019, which was an unmitigated disaster. I just have to comment on this because Big Ed again is being ridiculous. He says there are no pesos. Election day, the supermarkets were full of people getting rid of their pesos. Yeah, so now who has the pesos? The supermarket company has the pesos. Not the government. The supermarket company has the pesos. And what are they going to do with those pesos? He's just going to wipe them out and make them zero, make them worth nothing? Of course not. Those pesos, for whatever they are, will be exchanged to something if they do away with the central bank. But if this story is true, that Milay has replaced his radical economic advisors with Caputo and Riedel, then there will be no dollarization and there will be no closing of the central bank. None of that will actually happen. In addition, as part of moving to the center and away from radicalism, he is appointing Patricia Bullwick, who was his, I think, was his opponent in the election, in the earlier round of the election, who heads up the center-right political party and was again in the Macri government. She will now be the security minister in this new government. Well, but if they purchase dollars with all their pesos, then that is exactly what dollarization means. And when the government says we will now accept taxes in dollars, that's what dollarization means. The question is, are there enough dollars in the black market in Argentina to replace all those pesos? And who's going to take the pesos from them? So if I'm in the black market and you're offering me pesos for the dollar, what am I going to do with the pesos? At the end of the day, the pesos have to go to the government. They have to land up somewhere. And the government has to exchange those pesos into dollars. That's exactly what official dollarization looks like. People are already doing that, but at the end of the day, pesos have to disappear. I mean, God, this is not that hard, beget. Do the chain, the chain of where the pesos land up. The pesos have to land up in the government and the government has to exchange them for dollars. Otherwise, none of this works. But again, even that doesn't look like it's going to happen. So what we've got is the fear that in Argentina, instead of to get a real economic revolution, we're going to get another moderate, fearful, half-assed economic reforms. Now, Milés seems to be the kind of character with a passion and with his, in everything else. He seems to be committed to this cause. So let's see how committed he really is. But the next few weeks are going to be very indicative. And the first steps do not look good in terms of just the people he's bringing in seem to be conventional people. Conventional people. Again, beget, you just don't understand how money works if those are your views. All right, let's see. All right, we're good. Okay, we reached our goal. So thank you everybody for getting us to where we can still support the show. We've got a lot of people watching right now. I encourage you to become subscribers. I encourage you to like the show before you leave. We've got 62 likes and 173 watches. So please like the show before you leave. And if you want to ask a question, it's a great way to ask questions in the super chat. And again, you can just support the show with a sticker. And finally, yeah, thank you for being here. And don't forget to subscribe. All right, John. Hey, John says you're on. I was one of your friends who visited Rosella last week. Excellent. Amazing dinner. Yes, it was. I'm sure it was because I've been there myself. So I'm glad you enjoyed it. Excellent. I'm still waiting to hear how the new restaurant is going and nobody is willing to tell me. Big Ed, I understand completely how black markets work. I've lived in currency black markets, but you have no idea how you'd have no idea how money works. You really don't. I mean, you need to go back to the drawing board because what you're saying about, you know, the pesos being exchanged for dollars is complete nonsense because the pesos being exchanged for dollars, somebody still has pesos. And that person who still had pesos called it the black market still has to do something with those pesos. They can't buy anything with it. So what are they going to do with these pesos? But the black markets, but then what do you do with the pesos? Right? At some point, pesos will exit the economy. Right? That's the whole point. And Miele is committed to dollarization. Wait, he does it on us. A different question, but he is committed to it. All right. Enough of that. No more talk about Miele. Andrew, the hostage situation is a horrible dilemma. However, one shouldn't think short range. One should weigh if the hostage exchange will cause more or less deaths and damage over the long term. But I assume you think more, but why? Yes. I think much more. I think a number of reasons. One is because it slowed down as well as wiping out of Hamas. And I think it not just slowed it down, but also placed it in a position where it might just not happen. That is, you know, it's given Israel time and it's given the world community time to back off of its commitment to wiping out Hamas. And it's given Hamas. So that's one. It just reduces Israel's ability and commitment to wiping out Hamas. Two, it sacrifices Israeli soldiers because it is putting Hamas in a better position to defend themselves. There will be more Israeli casualties coming out of this that didn't have to happen. So, yes, you're saving a few kids, but you're getting a few kids killed. And I think that is super wrong. And third, you're in a sense acknowledging that Hamas is a legitimate political entity with which you negotiate. You've done it through the Qataris who are hosting the leaders of Hamas in Qatar. You've acknowledged their role. It makes it very unlikely that Israel will go to Qatar and kill the political leaders of Hamas, which they should have done and should do and should still do, but they probably won't. It legitimizes Qatar as an intermediary, which will have all kinds of long-term horrible consequences for Israel and for the United States and for the Middle East. And finally, it tells terrorists all over the Middle East, Israel will negotiate as long as you kidnap kids. Israel will negotiate as long as you kidnap many people. And they're likely to be more kidnapped. Hezbollah will do it. Islam Jihad will do it. The PLO, when the time comes, will do it. They will all do it. And this is why I think the cost far outweigh the benefits. And the benefits look enormous. You can see it in the faces of the family members and in the faces of the people who come out themselves. Let's see. I don't know why many of these people continue to listen to my show. It's surprising me. Why does the universe reward pushing your comfort zone? Why does the universe reward anything? The universe doesn't care one way about the other. It doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about whether you push your comfort zone or not. You reward yourself by pushing your comfort zone because you expose yourself to new experiences, to new ideas by doing that. You broaden your horizons. You gain additional knowledge that improves your ability to deal with reality in a variety of different ways. The more you know, the more you experience, the stronger you become, if you will. But that's not because the universe doesn't reward or punish anything. The universe just is. Derek Jensen, I'm a 17-year-old atheist and objectivist living in the Mormon household. Any advice on introducing these ideas to my Mormon friends and family? Sorry, I'm not laughing at you, Derek. I'm just laughing at the idea. Are you sure you want to? You know what? And your family is not... You're not going to convince your family. Unless you have some reason to believe that there's a particular family member who might be convinced. So I think the first thing you have to think about is, in what way do you want to introduce them? Are you trying to introduce them because you want to convince them? Then forget about it. Don't try to convince people. If you want to introduce them to these ideas because you want them to understand in a sense where you're coming from, and what your life is like and where you are, then that's fine. That's good. But then, take into account that they might be pretty upset and they might want to ostracize you and they might not be happy about this, depending on how Mormon and how Orthodox they are, if you will. So really think about what your motivation is. And I would basically introduce it to them on specific issues that, as they come up, mention it. I don't know if you want to sit your parents down and your family down and say, look, I'm an atheist if you are. I assume you are. Yeah, you say you're an atheist and I'm an atheist. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I assume you are. I assume you are. Yeah, you say you're an atheist and objectless. I would, you know, if I were you, and I don't know your family, so I don't know the exact situation, but if I were you, I would wait until you left home. Wait until you go to college. Try to go to college outside of Utah. And then, you know, sometime on vacation or sometime like that, sit them down and say, look, I'm an atheist. I've discovered this other philosophy. These are my values. These are my ideals. I don't expect you to embrace them, but it's important for me that you know where I'm coming from and what I'm thinking. And I hope, I hope I don't, you know, we can still be family. And that would be great. I have no intention of, I don't intend this to be, I don't want to fight over this. I don't want to argue over this, but this is my, this is my, this is my new, these are my ideas. This is my philosophy, you know, and that's it. So, I would do it that way. I would do it that way. But, you know, when I was 17, I tried to convince my family. It doesn't work. It just creates angst. And my family didn't really believe in anything particularly strongly. So, you know, don't try to evangelize for your opinions. Just convey them and answer questions when asked. That would be, I think, the best approach. But again, it really depends on the details of your particular family. Michael says, is the left trying to get rid of Eric Adams because he's cutting, spending, and won't cave to the unions? I don't know. It's hard to tell. Certainly the progressives, the kind of far out they left wants to get rid of him, and they'll do whatever they can to get rid of him. But whether this is an intentional campaign of dredging up dirt on him and trying to get rid of him, I think it's very difficult to say. But certainly they want him out. The left wing of the left wing wants Adams out. He's way too rational for them. Michael says, the art of knowing is knowing what to ignore. Well, no. I mean, that's one aspect of knowing is to know, is to be able to determine what the context is and knowing what is relevant and what is not to that context. But it's not the only thing that involves in the art of knowing. It's one of many things that are required in order to know something. I don't particularly like these short attempts at wisdom. They never really capture anything meaningful. Michael says, I understand rushing through $2 and $5 question but $10 questions deserve more respect. I give tons of respect, tons of respect. Thank you, Michael. Michael, the king of asking $10 question. But then once in a while, he'll come in with $50 or even $100 or even $2. I mean, I think he is king of the super chat. I think he's asked more questions and probably put more money into those questions than anybody. So I'm not rushing through. It's all I have to say. America is 9-11. Israel is 24-7. I don't know how people live there. Well, I think it's an exaggeration. I mean, Israel usually is peaceful. Since the Secondary Tafada, you get attacks here and attacks there but it's nothing like what we just saw and it's nothing like 9-11 since 32,000. But yes, Israel is a dangerous place to live but it has immense upsides. It's a great place to live. The people are fantastic. The opportunities are there. So sometimes, you know, life acquires to live under risk and Israelis make the most of it. They have kids. They're the only Western countries. They're the only developed country that has a positive demographics. Even among the secular, they have more kids than any other secular country in the world. Yeah, I mean, Israel is an amazing place. In spite of the threat they live under constantly. That doodle bunny off-topic. But if men are allowed to date for looks, why can't women date for money? I don't think men should date for looks and I don't think women should date for money. I mean, I think it should be one consideration among many but if that is your primary consideration as a man or if that is your primary consideration as a woman, you're screwed up, your relationships will be screwed up and your life will be screwed up. That is my view. So I think you date for character. You date for somebody who connects with you. You date for visibility. You date for connection. You don't date for looks or for money. Although looks and money can be a consideration but again, they're one among many. They're not the main one. Liam says, ARI went from having 95k to 125k subscribers since the war in Israel started. How did that happen? A few well-placed viral videos. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it was well-placed. And as far as I know, nobody at ARI knows why these particular videos went viral but two videos went viral. The one of Nikos on Israel that he did it at Okon so a while back but happened to be released just after October 7th and it's a good talk and Nikos is charismatic and it took off. And then one with Ilan and I think Nikos on the history also took off. It had a great title but it's not enough. The title couldn't have been enough. God's of the algorithm, hard to tell. They still haven't figured out what exactly made them take off. There's also, I did read somewhere, that once you reach 100,000, everything becomes easier. That is the algorithm favors you in some significant way. So part of it could be that once they went from 95 to 100,000 that 100,000 allowed the next videos to benefit from the increased visibility through the algorithm which led to the videos taking off and them to achieve 125,000. But yes, the two videos they did each achieved hundreds of thousands of views and that will generate a lot of interest and a lot of subscribers. It's great. Why at 516? Is it wrong or second-handed to buy followers? No, it's just not clear what the value is to buy followers because at the end of the day you're trying to benefit. So only if you think you'll get more money from them than you spent. James said, did you see Norma Philkenstein on Piers Morgan? Douglas Murray called him a sociopath. Yes, and I'm glad I didn't agree to debate Finkelstein because I won't. The guy is a horror. He is, I don't know, sociopath is a technical term. He is a really evil bastard. I think that's the un-technical term. And Douglas Murray has been amazing over the last month and a half. He's been spectacular reporting out of Israel. His moral clarity, his moral unambiguousness have been enormously refreshing. He's really stepped up and good for him. And I think Finkelstein, I think just as Douglas Murray said, Finkelstein is not worthy of debating. He is too far gone on the denial, evasion side of the equation. He's too immoral. He's too evil to debate. So I will not be debating Norma Philkenstein. By the way, my debate on Iran got canceled with some bizarre reason. I have no idea. We'll see if it ever gets resurrected. Zopa Swamp, something. Sorry, I can't pronounce the name. Hey Iran, longtime fan of the show. Oh, I think this is also a first-time super chat. So thank you, really, really Zopa. I'll call him Zopa. Thank you, Zopa. Really, really appreciate that. Longtime fan of the show from Ireland here. All right. Thanks for your coverage. Wish it was for better reasons. I live in Dublin and those rioters were nothing but teenage hijacking the issue. Yeah, I mean, it was thugs. It was basically thugs hijacking the issue. I don't know to what extent immigration is a problem. In Ireland, to what extent immigrants are a problem with Ireland. In Ireland, I'm sure Irish people commit crimes as well and people don't go nuts and demand that Irish people leave the island immediately. So, yeah, it's thugs. It's horrible. It's sad. But it does illustrate what will happen to Islam, I think, long-term in Europe if they continue to stick it to poke their eye of the Europeans. Andrew, you get much criticism in the nature of you are wrong because you are against building political coalitions. I know you disagree, but do you view that criticism as honest? No, now from the people it comes from. I don't. Because I've explained why I don't build coalitions, I've explained with whom. I've also explained that I'm willing to build coalitions with the right people over the right issues. I'm not against that. Nobody has done more to work with non-objectivists on a variety of different topics over the last 20 years. Nobody has done more than I have. So, yes, I think most of the people on the chat here who make this criticism are not being honest. They purposefully distort what I say. They purposefully evade what the so-called coalition partners advocate for. They purposefully ignore the arguments that I make. Now, maybe they just don't get my arguments and they're just not smart enough. That's possible too. But I do think there's some evasion going on as well. And it's part of the course. When I was criticizing Trump, I was misquoted constantly. I'd be misquoted on immigration. I'd be misquoted on Islam. I'd be misquoted on Trump. I'd be misquoted on forming coalitions and all of this stuff. So, it's a combination of, yeah, it's mainly evasion. I mean, there's a potential for honest disagreement, but given the way the conversation evolves on the chat, it doesn't appear honest to me. Just my views. Jason Adams says, who was this Dennis Kucinich? Would said you might debate. Was a congressman, spell it please, confused. Yeah, Dennis Kucinich was, you know, I looked him up at the time. There he is. He's a Democrat, served in the U.S. Representative, House of Representatives from Ohio 10th Congressional District from 1997 to 2013. He was RFK's, one of RFK's leading political advisors. He's old. He must be in his 70s or 80s. He left his post as an advisor to RFK because I think of RFK's pro-Israel position and Dennis Kucinich is very anti-Israel. So, you know, that's who Dennis Kucinich is. But he was a former congressman from Ohio, a Democrat, and a very left-wing Democrat, so real progressive. And I was supposed to debate him. And it was all set. There was a daytime location. It was all happening. Not in front of an audience. It was going to be a debate online, live, live streamed. And then the people who were going to live stream canceled it. And it was pretty ridiculous, I have to admit. Given all the months, and this had been going on for a long time, I was supposed to do a debate with them on Christianity, where I was going to critique Christianity against the Christian. So we were going to debate Christianity, the value of Christianity, Western Civil, something. And then they canceled that. And they said, no, we want to debate Iran. They tried to give me to debate Scott Horton. I said, no. Still got Dennis Kucinich. I said, yes. And then they said, well, then they couldn't get a hold of Kucinich. They said, would you do Scott? No. And they went, oh, Dennis Kucinich is back. Well, all good. And then, oops, two weeks before the debate, no, we can't do it. Some internal issue. And they canceled it. So I don't know what happened. And it's, yeah. Propos says, good advice the moment. Kid, you're on. I'm an ex-moment. And I waited until I was financially independent. And it worked out for me would have been a disaster if my family still had leverage on me. You want to not have, give them leverage. Paul Cohen says, have you heard that Hamash used slave labor to build the tunnels? And of 160 children died. Why is no world clam about this? Yes, I haven't heard that. I don't know the numbers exactly. I don't know that anybody does. But yeah, I mean, why is there no world clam about this? Why is there no world clam about Muslims and slaving Muslims all the time? Muslims are killing Muslims all the time. There's no world clam about Pakistan kicking out 2 million Afghan refugees sending them back. Some of them to certain death in Afghanistan. There's no clam, a world clam, a very little clam when, what's his name? Assad flattened whole Syrian cities of his own people killing men, women, children. But the UN still thinks that what Israel has done is the worst ever. The numbers just don't match up. Assad killed many, many, many, many more times more people, more children than Israel did. There's no world clam about what the Yemenites are doing to one another. There's no world clam about what's happening in Sudan. The world does not care about Muslim, against Muslim violence. They don't care about children. They don't care about Muslim children. They don't care about Muslim women. Look at Iran as they're clamoring about the way the Iranian regime is treating Iranian women as their clamor about the stoning of Saudi women for adultery in Saudi Arabia. No, the world does not care. It does not care what I order, not even a little bit when, what do you call it, when Muslims abuse other Muslims, when Muslims slaughter other Muslims. The world just doesn't care. But when Jews do it, ooh, then they care a lot. And if America did it, when America does it, they care a lot. But when they do it themselves, they don't care. Because that's their culture. They can do whatever they want within their own culture. It's when Western culture, and I did this when I talked about the left and Hamas, it's when Western culture, country of the West, America, Israel, culture of the West, an oppressor by definition because color of the skin and because affiliation with Western civilization, color skin doesn't really work for the Israelis. And, you know, it's when the oppressor does it to the oppressed. Again, by definition we're oppressors because we're part of Western civilization. Then it's a problem. Then the world cares. It's sick. It's altruism. It's altruism in its kind of ugliest, worst form. Alexis, thank you, Alexis. I am attending a talk with a high-profile UK Tory MP organized by the Adam Smith Institute next week. What questions should I ask them? What do you think it's going to be like in the opposition? I mean, I'd be curious what they think the lesson learned for the last from the last, what is it, since 2019 when they won that landslide victory. What did the lesson learn? Why have they failed so on such a grand scale? What do they think the cause of the failure is? And if they had to do it over again, what would they do differently? And primarily here I would look for anything about economic liberty, economic freedom, economic liberalization, you know, doing what they promised to do after Brexit, deregulation, all of that, lowering taxes, all the things that they promised, promised, promised and haven't done. What do they think caused the lack of popularity? Why is there a session in England? What are the challenges that they face? I'm wondering who this Tory MP is. Is it Kemi, is my question, is it Kemi? Because I like Kemi and I hope Kemi runs for Prime Minister next time. I hope she becomes the lead of the Conservative Party. But yeah, why didn't they liberalize after Brexit? Why didn't they do what they're supposed to do and do they think that has anything to do with the fact that the economy is doing so poorly? I don't know, I think that makes the most sense. You know, hard for me, you know, if it's Kemi asked her what she learned from reading Iron Man and send my regards, if it's her. Alright, thank you, Alexis. That was $50, really, really appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, what a disaster the UK Tories have been. What a disappointment, more than anything else. I was so, remember I on this show said I was really optimistic and really positive and there's some really good people there and they could do really good things and when Boss Johnson was gone, you know, there's a real chance for the Tories to do the right thing to change Britain forever and to... God, what a disappointment they turned out to be. What a disappointment. It just shows you without a philosophical backbone, what can you expect? Not much, it turns out. And that's the thing about Millet. Let's see if he has the philosophical backbone to go through with what he's promised. I'm not convinced. Alright, everybody. We did great on the Super Chat, so really, really appreciate it. Thank you. It went long, I know in 20 minutes. Really, really appreciate that. I will be back tonight at 7 p.m. So this is my Black Friday special. You get two for one. So I'll be back tonight. And what else do we want to say? Tomorrow at 2 p.m. East Coast time, there is an AMA. Ask me anything with my $25 plus supporters and anything you might want to add. Daniel says, is gaslighting a form of somehow commensurate with the sanction of the victim? I don't think so. Yeah, I don't see that, Daniel. You might want to give me an example of why you think that is. It's only second-handed in a sense that you value, you're using other people, but I'm not sure how that works. Why that would be a sanction of the victim. I mean, gaslighting is where you manipulate and you attempt to make the victim be confused about the abuse that they're receiving from you. And it's only second-handed. Is it a form of sanction of the victim? Oh, I see because they're the victim. I don't know. Sanction of the victim is not manipulated. Sanction of the victim is something the victim gives wholeheartedly. Well, it gives it without really thinking about it. It gives it not because they're being manipulated to do it, but because altruism, their very fundamental code, requires it from them. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So gaslighting results in the victim sanctioning you. That's true. But I think it's a different idea. It's caused by something different than what the... It's caused by something different than what the sanction of the victim or gaslighting does. The cause is for the behavior of sanctioning is different. Let's see. Alexis says it's Jacob Riesmog. I mean, he's a little too conservative for my liking, a little too religious, I think, for my liking. He's good at economic issues. He's been good at economic issues in the past. He's been kept out of the government because he's good at economic issues. So I'd be interested to see his evaluation. It would be interesting to find out his evaluation of what has caused the state of the conservative party to be what it is. His evaluation of why Brexit has turned out so bad. His evaluation of why UK government has failed so much. But he's not as good as some other people. And I don't like him on certain issues because he's too much of a conservative. But he's fairly good on some of the economic issues. So it'd be interesting to see if he gets it in terms of what went wrong, what they did wrong, what they did wrong. Diego says something interesting about the sanction of the victim. This might be true. Sanction is buying into the premise honestly. Being duped by gaslighting is accepting the apparent premise. But no to actual, but not to the actual premise of the, yeah, so it's being, you're being deceived about it. You're being manipulated around it. So one is honest and one is not. I mean, I'm sure there's a blowing of the line somewhere there. But yes, I think that captures, that captures it. All right, everybody. See you tonight. Bye.