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 Monday, June 26. Yeah, what a weekend. That was, oh I should put it on the video. That was pretty crazy, crazy weekend in Russia at least. I don't know, Puerto Rico was pretty quiet. But in Russia it was a completely nutty, nutty, nutty weekend. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. Anything we know Monday that we didn't know yesterday, we'll see. And then we'll go, we'll talk about Biden-nomics. We'll talk about the Santas' immigration plan. And or at least the outline of his plan as presented I guess today. And I should have called it Trump on a cross. Trump on a cross, Trump bearing the cross. It's, you know, that'll be short because I don't think I actually will have to give it any commentary. It will be so obvious. It's perfect, perfect. All right, ooh I see, I see there's an editing error in my thing. Let me just fix that. All right, so just to remind everybody, could use the super chat to ask questions on pretty much anything, including the news, including what's going on in the world. You can also support the show by using a sticker as Katharine has done. Thank you, Katharine. Robert says T minus four days, five hours until Ocon 2023. Robert has calculated it so I don't have to. I arrived early. I've got an ARI board meeting on Friday, so I'm going to arrive on Thursday. So yes, exciting, exciting, exciting conference. Conference, I'm giving a talk on Saturday, yeah, first day of the conference on the one Ukraine. So I have to say this weekend kind of set me back a little bit because instead of working on my talk, I was following the news partially because if I'm doing a talk on the one Ukraine, the use was relevant. But the way this all ended up completely thrown everything into a loop. So who knows if it has any relevance to what I'm going to say in the talk. Anyway, the talk will be worked on between now and Saturday. So thank you, Robert. So yes, so $250 for every one of these news roundup shows is what keeps the news roundup shows going. Thank you to those of you who do monthly contributions. I know some of you do it specifically for this because you really enjoy these shows. I've heard from a number of people that they don't watch or read news anymore. This is it. This is a news source. Yeah, that's good. I think that's good. It means you're shrinking the amount of news you're consuming, which is probably good. And you're getting it from the best source in the world, which is right here on your own bookshelf. Okay, let's talk about Russia. So, as you know, pregosin led the Wagner Group on this supposed coup or mutiny. Now they're calling it a mutiny. I'm not sure exactly what the technical differences between a mutiny and a coup are. But they have to be because they keep raising this as a big difference. Anyway, they took Rostov, which is the major city in this part of kind of in the southwest on the border with Ukraine. It's a city out of which the whole campaign against Ukraine is being managed, run by the generals and by the Ministry of Defense of Russia. They took that city almost with no violence. They held the generals in charge of an entire Ukraine campaign. Under them, although from every indication, they didn't stop them from doing their work. That is the campaign in Ukraine continued. And indeed Ukraine was pummeled with missiles while this was all going on. At the same time, another column headed towards Moscow, hit a city on the way, took over some of the military facilities in that city, but kept going towards Moscow, then stopped. Then supposedly pregosin cut a deal with Putin via the mediator, the dictator of Belarus, Lukashenko. And it was all over. And the troops that were almost 200 kilometers from Moscow turned around, went back home. Pogovit Pogosny went out of Rostov and disappeared. Today, this morning, he actually came online and explained himself. But the explanation just makes it even more bewildering. The whole thing is just bizarre. And the only explanation at the end of the day that I have for this is we're talking about completely irrational players. We're talking about a mafia state called Russia where all kinds of competing forces are trying to stab each other in the back and try to maneuver to survive and maybe thrive, succeed in some way. We're talking about just gangsters. And gangsters do crazy, irrational things. Gangsters take each other's families, hostages and force each other to do things that are not understandable to the outside world. Gangsters use all kinds of mechanisms to do this. But there are, of course, a million conspiracy theories in the background. The conspiracy theory is primarily focused on, yeah, Scott is, of course, going to be the leader in asking about these. Yeah, none of this really happened. It's all kind of misinformation. It's all a scam. Very unlikely. If you saw the posts from supporters of Putin, if you saw posts on Telegram in Russia, if you saw posts by supporters of Wagner and how they've responded throughout the day and what they did afterwards, unlikely. It's also unlikely because Pogosin has made a statement this morning and we'll see what happens the rest of the day. But I think you'll see other steps being taken the rest of the day that suggest that something real happened here. So that was one. Another suggestion was this is all a 4D chess play to get Pogosin to move to Belarus with his troops and open a second front against Ukraine from the north. Again, they could have just asked, they could have just moved Pogosin to Belarus and open a second front with Ukraine. They didn't have to go through this whole charade, which by the way has made Putin look really, really weak. That's the one thing you can unanimously agree on. There's no question of, so that is very unlikely. He could have done it any way in. There's a whole question we'll get to in a minute. Really Pogosin with his troops in Belarus and Lukashenko is okay with this? How can Lukashenko be okay with this? There's no way this is actually happening. We will see. Another theory was that, I literally read this, that the Wagner group's target was actually not Moscow. That was actually a diversion. The target was a nuclear weapons facility in a city whose name I can't remember, on the way to Moscow. A city that clearly his troops entered. A facility that they are now drone footage supposedly that they entered. So the whole thing was a diversion so that Pogosin he could capture some nuclear weapons. This is the scariest of all the conspiracy theories. It's very unlikely. It's still scary because even if it's very, very unlikely, even if there's a tiny possibility, it's true. If it's true, it's really, really scary. It's scary for everybody because it is a nutcase. It's a thug, a gangster and a nutcase. And him having nuclear weapons is very, very scary. So that was another conspiracy theory. Well, again presented by fairly reliable sources from Russia itself. But I think still a conspiracy theory at the end of the day. Nobody actually knows. Anyway, Pogosny today came out and said, look, never intended to take Moscow. Never intended for this to be a coup. This was a demonstration because the Ministry of Defense was about to dismantle Wagner Group. But on July 1, we know that to be true. That his employees, the fighters in the Wagner Group, refused to sign the contract with the Ministry of Defense. And it was like a no man's land. What's going to happen to these people? And then he says they were attacked by the Ministry of Defense in this Missala tank in which 30 of his fighters died. And he had no option. Now, by any indication, he was planning this. This was too well run to have been done instantaneously. But anyway, this is his story.  He took over Rostov, two columns. They made 780 kilometers of progress in one day. They regret having to fire at the aircraft, but the aircraft were bombing them and trying to destroy them. He did not want to kill anybody. He says, join the march, all the military facilities on the way basically gave up and joined them. Nobody really opposed them. And what he wanted was not to allow the destruction of Wagner, although I think that's what's happening anyway. And for those who are responsible for the failures in Ukraine and the failures to go after Wagner, to be punished as primarily the Ministry of Defense and the leading generals. They stopped the advance on Moscow and they realized that there was going to be massive bloodshed if they tried to enter Moscow. They didn't want bloodshed. They don't want Russians killing Russians, he says, right? And they wanted this to be a protest, not actually to take authority. He does not want to be the ruler of Russia, he says. Lukashenko reached out and they cut a deal. And the whole idea was to find solutions for the legal operations of the Wagner legally. And as a consequence, the column turned around. The march showed that they had power, they had strength, and indeed that they had a lot of support within the Russian military. He says that if Wagner was responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, if they had managed the operation starting from the 24th of February 2022, the so-called special operation in Ukraine would have ended in one day, he would have taken Kiev and it would have been done for. And that's part of what he wanted to show the world and show how badly Russia has, has operated so far. Anyway, that's Pogosny. Putin was on TV today. Some regular event, he didn't mention any of this. We praised engineers and whatever Russia it was live. Minister of Defense showed a video of the Minister of Defense walking around, but it looks like an old video. There are rumors now that the Minister of Defense will be fired, there's an investigation into it, and that the generals might be fired. Who knows? We'll see as things evolve. In the meantime, TASS, the Kremlin's basically news organization, has announced that Pogosny is still under investigation for treason. And so supposedly the deal with Lukashenko included him not being accused of treason. So it looks like Putin is backtracking. Is Pogosny already in Belarus? Is he going to be able to take 25,000 troops to Belarus? How's he going to get there through Russian territory? How's he going to deploy them? Lukashenko really won 25,000 Wagner troops.  A lot of people don't like Lukashenko. But he could turn around and take out Lukashenko at any point in time. So do we really believe that? Is that really going to happen? Is Lukashenko going to survive this? Is Putin not going to throw him out of a window? Or just blow him up?  He doesn't have to be subtle, I don't think in this case. What's going to happen to all these Wagner fighters? Where are they going to go? A lot of them were super upset that they were treated from Moscow. What happens to Putin? Putin is much weaker today than he was on Friday. Indeed, Putin is weaker today than he's ever been. And who else now is going to have the guts to challenge him for power? Is Putin going to survive? For how long? If he fails, if there is a coup ultimately, or he just dies mysteriously, or naturally, who takes over? Is it going to be the ultra-nationalists, the people who want to escalate the war and go all out and maybe even take on NATO? Or is it going to be more moderate forces that do exist in the Kremlin who would probably withdraw troops and end this war? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. And you'll read all kinds of stuff on Twitter and in the news, and everybody today is out with some kind of explanation, some kind of reasoning, some kind of something about what is going on in Russia. But the reality is that nobody knows, I think, including the Russians. Because, again, this is a mafia political system. One of the things that Putin has done over the last 10 years is he's really surrounded himself by weak people. By people who do not threaten him. Pugosny is one of the stronger people who's a little to periphery. Who else is at the periphery? Who else is not weak? Who else is willing to take on Putin? Is anybody? Maybe nobody is. I don't know if you saw the pictures of the Russian people celebrating Pugosny. Not because they love Pugosny, but because I think they love the idea of somebody challenging Putin. Is that going to feed popular unrest or not? I don't know. You know, so many questions, so much uncertainty. This is a story we'll be talking about for a while. Together with the war, in the meantime, Ukraine is just chipping away and chipping away and making slow progress. Unfortunately, it's still slow. It's unlikely to be very fast, given how well the Russians have dug themselves in, if you will. But the progress is in one direction. The progress is Ukraine taking territory away from Russia and not the other way around. And whether that accelerates in the days, weeks, months to come or not, we will see. But so far it's just chipping away. Again, I'll remind everybody, the bulk of the new Ukrainian forces with the new tanks and the new weapons systems have not yet been deployed. I still think Ukraine is trying to figure out where's the best place to deploy them. They're still trying to fake out the Russians and see whether they can get them to go to the wrong place and then attack them somewhere else. There's a lot of strategy behind the scenes that we're not seeing. But we will say, maybe it could be that I'm wrong and it could be this is it. But in any case, Ukraine is moving forward and they are chipping away. And at some point, I expect them to have a breakthrough. Anything else about Russia? Not really. I mean, again, we'll keep coming back to this. I think the big thing right now is a lot of what's happened kind of makes no sense. But making no sense shouldn't surprise anybody. The forces we are talking about are irrational. They are fundamentally weak. They are fighting an internal battle, Pogosny versus Putin versus who knows who else in the background. There's a massive battle for control over Russia and control over Russia's future that is happening in the background. And of course, I know that the American right who believes Putin is second only to God or maybe second only to Trump, I don't know. But to God is convinced that this is some amazing power play by Putin. But Putin is significantly weaker today than he was last week. And what has just happened is dramatically weakened him overall.  But yeah, he is the hero. He is the hero. This is the authoritarian right. Let's see. All right, so that's a Russia update. We'll have more of those, believe me, as stuff happens. Okay, Biden economics. Bidenomics is a new term. I talked about it a little bit last time. We talked about a manufacturing dramatic increase in the building of manufacturing plants in the United States over the last year and a half. Since the CHIP Act was passed and the Inflation Reduction Act, which is both investing heavily in infrastructure, primarily manufacturing infrastructure in the United States. And this is viewed by everybody as well. Look, Biden is succeeding. This is amazing. This is what we always should have had more central planning, industrial planning. The Republicans are actually trying to outcompete the Democrats by saying, yes, we need more of this. We'll give it to you as well. It's not just the Democrats. In other words, the Republicans are completely embracing Biden economics. There was a big conference put on by Compass USA, the big kind of new right organization in DC by Cass. Cass is the guy in charge of this. Anyway, the government is going to spend. We're going to figure this out. This is great. Well, the latest of this piece is that as part of the infrastructure law that was passed, which was bipartisan. I'll continue to remind him. There are going to be billions and billions and billions of dollars distributed and starting now to build a high speed internet all over the United States. The government is going to deploy billions of dollars. They're going to decide which states get them and how much they get primarily for areas that don't yet have high speed internet primarily for areas that, you know, they'll be neglected by the market. But the idea here is to, for the government to roll out massive spending on an internet, 40 billion dollars for high speed internet. This will create, of course, many jobs. This will, of course, connect people to the internet so they can be more productive. This will increase the, what do you call it, the feasibility of people to move to rural America and work from home because I'll have high speed internet now. It's, I mean, the delusion of power, the delusion of central planning, the delusion of all this. I mean, as I said the other day about manufacturing, this is the classic broken window fallacy.  What you ignore is what could have been done with that money. What you ignore is what the market, how the market would have allocated that money to actually desirable uses, not to the uses desired by a central planner, by government authoritarian, but by the actual people by the marketplace. Part of this massive investment in America that is part of this inflation reduction act is, in addition, a massive investment in nuclear power. Now, I happen to like the idea of nuclear power. I want more nuclear power. I want more high speed internet. I think both are good things. I just want the government to stay out of it. But the government is going to be spending huge amounts of money, again, billions of dollars, the Biden administration is, to advance nuclear power because it's green. And, you know, so right now, a majority of Americans want more nuclear power. And the federal government has opened up the coffers, and they are getting ready to spend massive amounts on nuclear power. The government is now just giving a $1.1 billion grant from this fund to California to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open in spite of the fact that California wanted to close it because it's getting old. In addition, there are plans now to build new nuclear power plants all over the United States. Of course, these are only plans. They're not reality yet. The real challenges here, challenges which I don't think are being dealt with. The government is much better at throwing money at problems than actually dealing with the challenges. Three challenges. The first is cost, because of regulations, because of controls, because of all the environmental and safety, and the millions of regulations that have to go through everything. Nuclear power reactors to build are still, even the mini nuclear power plants, super expensive, somewhere double probably the cost of what would make them economic on a per kilowatt scale. And whether any of these projects will actually be built, given these costs, you know, who knows. Second question, and this relates to Russia, is where do they get the fuel? How do you get refined uranium? How do we get the uranium needed for the fuel? It turns out that Russia dominates uranium processes, processing. And indeed, the nuclear power plants in the United States today are still buying the uranium from Russia, a billion dollars a year. Unbelievable. This is low enriched uranium, high, sorry, a high assay low enriched uranium. Russia is the only commercial supply of it. Now, you know, they're trying to figure out other places to buy it. They're trying to figure out how to do it in other places. But right now, Russia is it. We're not talking about nuclear bomb-grade uranium. We're talking about, I guess, this high assay low enriched uranium, which is used for nuclear power plants. For example, the power plant that was likely to be built in Wyoming, in a coal town in Wyoming, by Terrapower, I think this is the company Bill Gates supports, is now delayed opening for two years into the future. Because it can't get uranium. It can't get uranium. Department of Energy in the United States scrambling to figure out how to get uranium. Now, the raw uranium is in other places. The question is how do you get it enriched and enriched uranium? And then what do you do with the spent fuel? Of course, the Terrapower, I think, uses spent fuel in order to, or one of these nuclear power plants actually uses spent fuel. So, I mean, that would be the solution is to open a bunch of spent fuel facilities. And then finally, I think this is funny. Finally, the problem with building a lot of nuclear power plants, because the plan is to triple nuclear power plant, nuclear energy production in the United States by 2050. Triple it. Today, it produced about 19% of all the electricity in the U.S. The idea is to triple the amount of electricity, not necessarily the percentage, but the amount. For that, the United States reckons they will need 375,000 workers. In the near term, they're going to require skilled trades, electricians, metal workers, fabricators, construction workers. These people don't exist. We don't have 375,000 workers who can do these works. Right now, there's a massive shortage of exactly these kind of workers, skilled blue collar labor. By the way, they make a good living because they're in short supply. So the biggest problem, one of the big problems beyond regulations, costs, controls, you know, the government might say we run nuclear power plants, but the regulatory agency doesn't approve them on all that stuff, beyond nuclear waste, beyond all those. No people to build the plants. Not enough construction workers. The Santas has a solution for this, don't worry. So, and this is one of the big problems in this idea of reviving through Bidenomics, reviving U.S. manufacturing. Who's going to work at these manufacturing plants? Where are the workers? There's a massive shortage of workers right now. I mean, unemployment is still like 40, 50 year lows. Who's going to work there? Anyway, I'm not a fan of any central planning. I'm not a fan of money flowing to these things. I do hope, though, that what will result from this is trimming down regulations, lowering the cost of producing nuclear energy, and maybe significant freeing up of that market to allow private enterprise to go and build nuclear power plants, rather than the government deciding who the winners and losers are and deciding how much money to spend and pouring money into white elephant projects all over the country. Let's leave it to the private sector. That's not the plan, though. Again, both Democrats and Republicans are committed now. Committed, whether it's the Santas or Trump or any of the Republicans or Biden or RFK or any of the Democrat, they're all committed to managing economy and determining how to use, how to allocate resources, picking winners and losers, and focusing on increasing manufacturing jobs in areas and fields and things that the government as a central planner will decide. Basically, even though China is in decline, China has won because what the United States is doing is embracing the Chinese model. Was it public-private partnerships? Alright, talking about immigration, the Santas talked today about immigration, or yesterday, so the Santas is basically adopted through and through the entire playbook of Trump's immigration policies. The only difference between him and Trump is that he will get it done. He tells us, he promises us, so Ann Coulter will be happy. Ann Coulter was very upset with Trump because Trump didn't get it done.  He will end both rights citizenship, which I think is a disgrace. He will finish building the southern wall. A wall. John Lewis, John David Lewis, who was a great objectivist and writer, intellectual, who wrote about foreign policy, wrote about history, wrote an essay about how when you build a wall, it's a sign that you're an empire in decline. Building walls is the beginning of the end. And he dates that back to ancient times, and he shows that we're confident countries that are bold and confident don't build walls, don't feel the need to have walls. Let's see, so both rights citizenship, he's going to finish the wall, he's going to send US forces, military into Mexico to combat drug cartels.  But I'm against walls in Israel. Tear down the walls in Israel. Absolutely Israel should not have walls. It doesn't need them. It needs to actually win its wars, not build walls. The walls in Israel, the fences in Israel, all signs of defeat. They're all signs of weakness. And I've been against them from day one. Let's see. Yeah, so, you know, turn people away, all the Trump policies. So basically what DeSantis' campaign is, it's a campaign basically to basically say, I'm competent, Trump was not. Now he's right that Trump was not competent. But he's basically taking every policy issue from Trump and adopting it.  Problem for DeSantis is nobody seems to be excited. Nobody seems to get excited by his campaign. We'll see what happens still early. A lot of things can change. But so far Trump seems to be running away with this. And just nobody, there just seems no excitement. He seems to be pissing off more people than anybody, than anybody else. Right. Yeah. I never said walls in Israel are just fine. I said, you can't compare Israel to the United States, because Israel actually faces a threat. Israel actually people coming over and blow themselves up. But the wall is not the solution. I've never said building fences in Israel is a solution for anything. I've never advocated for building walls of fences in Israel with the West Bank. Never. And I think I've always said it's a sign of weakness. It's a sign of Israel not being able to deal with the problem. And here I'm going to get angry a little bit. But the constant attempt to compare Israel to the United States is so frigging dishonest. It's so, you know, it's so wrong. It's so evasive. It's so ignoring reality that it just doesn't deserve, you know, doesn't deserve, well, it deserves me getting angry, I guess.   Because Mexicans have not been blowing up places in the United States. There are no suicide bombers coming across. There are no suicide bombs coming in from Mexico. I mean, the comparison is just bizarre. Just bizarre and outrageous.  But this is what people do when they don't have an argument. They don't have a good argument. They don't actually say why they want to block immigration on the southern border. They don't want to reveal their true motives. So they make stuff up. Yeah, how many 9-11s were created because people came in through the Mexican border illegally. All the 9-11 terrorists were here illegally. And how many terrorist attacks have been committed in the United States by illegal immigrants? Terrorist attacks, Muslims, none. And I'm not for not screening for terrorists and I've even been favorable for banning immigration for certain countries as a consequence of 9-11. I mean, all of this, given what I've said about it, is just dishonest. It's just dishonest. All right, finally, finally, a favorite story of the day. So Donald Trump was speaking in front of an evangelical activist conference. And he basically told them that he wears his indictments of a badge of courage. And then he continued to tell them that he shared his struggles with a Christian activist. Christian activists. And this is a quote from Trump. Together we're warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, the globalists, and the Marxists. All right, so at least you know, those of you atheists out there, that you're part of the people, he's out in a crusade to stop. It's good to see that he actually said it. Again, together we're warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, the globalists, and the Marxists. And I guess part of that crusade is keeping top secret documents and hiding them from the FBI and scheming to prevent the FBI from finding them and refusing to hand them over when he's asked to do so. So all of that is part of this crusade. I mean, this is part of him. And then he said, quote, I'm being indicted for you. And I believe the you is more than 200 million people that love our country. In other words, Trump is sacrificing himself for the rest of us. I mean, this indictment is his cross to bear. He is being a good Christian. He is suffering for the sins of others. He is making us all pure by suffering all these legal challenges that he is facing. He is pure and innocent, just like our Savior Jesus. And this is the guy who is likely, I think, you know, I'd give it, I'd give it, I don't know. 30, 40 percent odds that he will be the next president of the United States. But he knows, he knows how to play. He knows how to play his audience. He knows how to play it well. All right. Let's see. John Bales. AP says the independent Russian news outlet view us to claim the construction of a field camp for up to 8000 Wagner troops was underway in the area of Belarus about turning kilometers north of the border with Ukraine. Yeah, we'll see if that turns out to be true. But that is consistent with what the deal is supposed to be. The question is not only how many kilometers is this on the border with Ukraine. The question is how many how many kilometers is this camp from from Minsk, the capital of Belarus? How far is this from, you know, from, from which direction is are these troops going to march in? All interesting. Again, we are going to see how this all plays out. I am Mikat says, who would you cast to the movie about Ukraine spy hunter hunting Russian war criminals in Argentina, a movie based on a future true story? Who would be a Ukrainian spy hunters? I don't know. Was Zelensky. He's the obvious candidate. He's an actor. Yes, I would cast Zelensky in the role of spy hunters. And we can make it, we can turn into a comedy. And that would, that would make it even more fun. Rand, all players appear to be completely disconnected from reality. Nobody knows where their irrationality will take them. That's the problem. The problem is the field. And in this case, the, the, the field of relevant for what we're talking about is dominated by the irrational. It's dominated by, by power lusting irrational players. And that's very, very dangerous. And it's hard to say how it all ends and where it all ends. So scary. I think we live, you know, in that sense, particularly if you're in Eastern Europe, you're living in scary times. And by the way, another rumor is that the Russians have, and this has been around for a long time, you know, they occupy a nuclear power plant in, in Southern Ukraine. And they have, they have basically rigged the whole place to explode. They are, you know, they have explosives near the, the cores. They have the cooling water. They're going to diverge.  I don't know how big it is that they could purposefully create a Chernobyl like nuclear disaster in the south of Ukraine, which, you know, the challenge with that is, of course, the winds could be blowing in the other direction. So Russia could be affected by this. Certainly, Rostov, the city we talked about, is pretty close to Ukraine and not that far from this nuclear power plant. I, you know, who knows what they're doing? Who knows what they're thinking? Thinking is not what they're actually doing. So the whole thing is, again, scary, scary. I am Mirkat. Mexicans want to mow the lawns. Palestinians want to mow down our heads. Tiny difference. I am Mirkat as in Israel. I agree with him completely. Mexicans are not coming here. Mexicans, first of all, Mexicans are not coming over the border. There's almost no Mexican immigration into the United States. Almost all of them are coming from further south. A lot of Venezuela's, a lot of Cubans, a lot of Nicaraguans, some El Salvadorians, some Guatemalans, so Central America, but only from some places, but primarily from communist regimes that they're escaping. And they're not coming for the United States to be on welfare. We give them welfare and we deny them jobs. They're coming here to mow our lawns. They're coming here to actually work. And that's the big difference. Palestinians who want to cross that fence want to mow people down. They want to slaughter people. They want to kill people. So you compare the two situations, again, it's just dishonest. And I see this everywhere. Everybody wants to criticize, but Israel does this. The United States is not Israel. Thank God, I guess. Thank the founding fathers. The United States is a much better country than Israel. The United States is supposed to be a much more moral country than Israel. The United States is supposed to be a much freer country than Israel. And they do not come here for welfare. And indeed, by almost every measure, by most economists' degree, that the net contribution of illegal immigrants to the economy, if you just focus on the economy, is positive. They pay much more taxes than they consume in welfare. And in most places, illegals can't get welfare. The whole thing, I mean, the bogus arguments that they come up with against immigrants, they repeat the same myths over and over and over again. And of course, they're not just against illegal immigrants. They're against all immigrants. They don't want new people to this country. They don't want different people in this country.  They don't care if there are not enough workers to do the jobs. They don't care how much your standard of living will drop because immigrants are not coming. They don't care about all the startups that don't come up in. They don't care about the fact that, you know, so many of the immigrants create startups and being innovation. And so many of these immigrants are creating new technologies and then they go overseas and the other companies benefit. They don't care about all that. What they really care about is not to create imbalance with the ethnic composition of this country. God forbid that you play any games with ethnicity of the people in this country. And that's why they don't want birthright citizenship. We don't want all those babies who don't look exactly right to be, you know, to become American citizens and actually participate in America. And unfortunately, that is what motivates many, not all, but many of the people who are against this. It's plain old xenophobia. I mean, the economic arguments have been refuted. Almost all the arguments have been refuted. And, you know, some people still believe them and the political arguments still have some credibility. But the economic arguments, the security arguments are just nonsense. James says, would you consider leaving Puerto Rico once you build enough FU wealth, given the daily incompetence and inefficiencies as you get older, bad customer service becomes more and more unbearable? I mean, yeah, I'm always considerate.  At some point, I'm sure we'll leave Puerto Rico, but we'll see when and under what circumstances and where I go. We'll see. Hopper Campbell is a late-stage mis-economy, a mild lifeboat scenario, not a full-blown one. No, I just don't think it's a lifeboat scenario at this point. At this point, not, well, it depends. I mean, there might be particular aspects of it that are lifeboat. But no, be very careful in saying, well, morality is out because we're on a lifeboat. I'll do whatever. That would be very wrong.  Don't give up on that. All right. We have about $53 short of our goal. Let's try to make the goal. That would be great. $53 short. So, you know, $2.5, $20 questions, and we're there. Frank says, is the Wagner Group mutiny just like the Potomkin? I don't think so. I don't think so. Shali says, come to Florida. I'm coming to Florida. Ocon is in Florida. Ocon is in Florida starting on Friday. So I'll be there. Michael, did the Mossad have the moral right to assassinate and capture escaped Nazis who were hiding in South America? Is that a violation of another nation's sovereignty? Yes, and absolutely. And it's fine to violate another nation's sovereignty for the sake of justice, for the sake of morality, for the sake of your own national self-defense. So I have no problem with that. You know, these are regimes in South America that were cooperating with immolally with Nazis who had fled there, and it was absolutely the responsibility, I would say, the responsibility and right of the Israeli services to assassinate and capture and do whatever they needed to people who were clearly its enemies and say, these Latin American countries were not cooperating in their capture and if the Latin American countries were willing to capture them and hand them over, then there would have been never no need for their assassination and no need for their capture. Clark, I'm looking forward to my first Ocon. Oh yeah, you're going to have a lot of fun. Not your average algorithm. Isn't it presumptuous to think you're going to change millions of people's epistemology and ethics in your lifetime? I don't think I'm going to in my lifetime. It's going to take a lot longer than that. It is pretty presumptuous. Michael says, part of Ayn Rand's genius was the insight she provided into people's character and motives. I think that's right. Is most of the hate she gets for revealing the flaws and character of the ugly soul? I think that's a lot of it. I think people read her villains and they identified themselves in them and that pisses them off. Even more powerful is they read her heroes and they know they can never live up to that. They know they haven't lived up to it and won't live up to it.  Daniel, if Putin came to the U.S. for asylum, but in exchange for nuclear codes, is that a moral deal? Also, would it have been a good time to invade Russia over the weekend and control their nukes? No. I don't think we should invade Russia. It's too risky. It's too dangerous. It's not an issue of the right to do it. We have the right to do it because it's an authoritarian evil regime at this point. But it's too dangerous. Too many things can go wrong. And they have a lot of nukes in a lot of different places, including submarines. So there's no way for us to take over the nukes. I don't know what giving us the codes would do is there's no way for the Russian state to somehow find a way to change the codes. It's just dependent on Putin. I just don't trust that as they be all into all. So you'd have to know a lot more about how the nuclear program in Russia works to know if a deal like that made any sense. Alright guys, $41, and really we're pretty close to finishing. So you've got $41, you've probably got five minutes to see if we can make our target. Maryland, the government nuclear dollars will all go to feasibility studies, environmental impact studies, safety studies, equality studies. No dollars left to build. Probably. Probably. I mean, if all the money went to reducing the regulations to eliminating all the bottlenecks and the private sector would take care of the rest. But you're right. No way is that going to happen. Rand, Rand just stepped in and boom, done, as he said, with $41 and we are at the target. So thank you, Rand. And then we got Enric coming in. So we're a little bit over. Adam says the shortage of skilled workers might finally end the world's worst philosophy of education in American K-12 schools. Your opinion. I don't know. You know, you're assuming people learn from their mistakes and do something better. I'm just not convinced that that will actually happen. I think the shortage of skilled workers is just going to cause more stagnation. It's not going to change our educational system. Maryland says your people consider $2 if you can afford it. You should. Thank you, Maryland. Colt says I'm convinced that Trump is an atheist. I think so too. I might be wrong about that. I know I think he's an atheist. I think that. But regardless, he's still bad for making the Christian nationalism possible. Agree completely.  Enric from Pogosin's prior statement that Ukraine will take back all its territory. He may be positioning himself through his actions to replace Putin when he loses Ukraine. It could be. It could be he takes Belarus first. Who knows. But it could be if he survives, if Putin lets him live. I mean, there's so many question marks on what happens to these characters in the next few weeks. And again, given the nature of this state as a as a as a mafia state, anything, anything could actually happen. Anything could happen. So, yep. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Rand for getting us over the top. Thanks to all the super chatters for contributing to that. And for supporting the show. There's a lot of support for these daily news shows. We're definitely something we're going to continue as long as the support continues. So thanks, everybody. I've got a lot of a lot of viewers today as well. So thank you for that. Thank you for tuning in. That also is a show of support. Don't forget to like the show before you leave that helps with the algorithms that helps get us more exposure, helps increase our people who watch and ultimately subscribers. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share and all the rest of the stuff you know what to do when it comes to social media. See you all tomorrow. Another news round.


Hello and welcome to a summary of what you need to know about secrets by Bernard McLaverty. I'll explain the meaning of the story as it appears in stories of ourselves, the University of Cambridge International Examination Anthology of short stories in English. I'll begin with some context about the author of the story before explaining the plot in a nutshell. I'll explain the characters that you should be aware of in the story, then I'll highlight important themes that you should consider when studying the text. Bear in mind that we have a stories of ourselves course that goes into depth on these stories so make sure you do sign up for our course. So let's get started. Now to begin with, a little bit of context around Bernard McLaverty. He was born in Belfast in 1942 and he moved to Scotland in 1979 where he lived in Edinburgh on the Isle of Ile and now in Glasgow. After leaving school he became a medical laboratory technician, later studying at Queen's University Belfast and becoming an English teacher. He has been a writer in residence at the University of Aberdeen and guest writer at the University of Augsburg at Iowa State University and for three years he was visiting writer at John Moore's University of Liverpool and he's currently visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde. Now when it comes to the story itself, secrets. So the title of the story contributes to much of the various thematic concerns dealt with in the story and his title signifies the onerous theme of secrecy and confidentiality and the serious effects it causes. The anonymous protagonist of the story, the young boy, finds himself guilty lying beside his Aunt Mary's deathbed for he had in his mind an incident from the past that forever remained etched in both of their memories. McLaverty makes exceptional use of retrospection through the character of the young man to strengthen the other ideas that bring about the evolution of the plot. The story transits from the present to an unrecorded time in the past. The third person incognito narrator unfolds before the reader's an incident that made the Aunt hate her nephew for the rest of her life. The title itself, Secrets characterises the fact that the Aunt's secret had been let out. The story of her lover and her romantic pastimes of her youth were initially hidden from both the characters and the readers. The Aunt is depicted as quite reserved and she manages to keep her secret with herself. This however changes when she makes a mistake of telling the young boy not to look at her letters when he accidentally saw them on some other pretext. This let the seed of curiosity creep into the mind of the boy as he was determined to see what she was trying to hide and one day when he's visiting her, he sneaks into her office and discovers the letters that his auntie had exchanged with the man she loved. He reads them and these letters contain the secrets that Aunt Mary hides from her family. When she discovers the boy reading her letters, she insults him and promises she will remember the violation of her trust until the day she dies. The story then flashes forward again to the time after his Aunt Mary's death, showing the boy and his mother throwing his aunt's correspondences into the fire to protect the privacy she so desired. However, the boy's mother quickly reads through the letters before throwing them into fire, violating her privacy even in her attempts to protect it. Now when it comes to understanding the characters, the first is the narrator. So he's a young and curious character and he used to be really close to his Aunt Mary. However, overcome of curiosity when he was younger, he violates his aunt's trust by looking at her letters which she wants to keep secret. This causes his aunt to get really angry at him and they become estranged as a result. He harbors intense feelings of guilt and at his aunt's deathbed, he hopes she's forgiven him. The other characters Aunt Mary, so she's the narrator's aunt who was very close to him as a young boy. She used to read in books her favourite being Great Expectation about a woman, Miss Havisham, whose life came to a halt after being jilted and rejected at the altar on her day of her marriage. Perhaps this could be a reflection of how Aunt Mary feels with her unrequited life, on her unrequited love as well with Brother Benegas, the man who she fell in love with and went to war, yet he came back and gave his life to God instead of marrying her. Now Aunt Mary is extremely sensitive about guarding her past and her love letters and is incensed at her nephew for intruding on this and breaking her trust. Now when it comes to theme, the first is that of secrecy and of course this is aptly important because when you consider the title of the story it's secrets. Now the boy's aunt, Aunt Mary, is intensely reserved and secretive, she's sensitive about her past and the man who she fell in love with, Brother Benegas, who she perhaps felt may have jilted her just as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations was jilted at the altar on her day of her marriage after he came back from the war and he chose a life of faith for God rather than marrying her. Aunt Mary wants a secret past and her love hidden and is even burnt by her sister once she dies so these secret letters are burnt by her sister once she dies. The other theme is that of love, so unrequited love shapes and frames the story. So Aunt Mary is so sensitive about not being able to marry her true love to the extent that she's protective of a secret love for this man and this causes her to cut off her nephew when he learns about her past love life. The other theme is that of curiosity, so the boy's curiosity causes him to break his own sense of trust and respect for him and he regrets indulging this curiosity and harbors extreme feelings of guilt as a result of satisfying his curiosity. The other theme is that of guilt, so the boy feels extremely guilty for his transgression, breaking his aunt's trust and reading her secret letters and his estranged from his aunt and feels guilty that she may have never forgiven him for violating her trust. So that's all, if you found this summary video useful do make sure you sign up for our Stories of Ourselves course and check out our website which is www.firstreadtetors.com where you can find plenty of other revision worksheets, model answers and online courses covering all the major syllabuses including edXL, AQA and IGCSE. Thank you so much for watching.