the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon here in Puerto Rico. Hope everybody is having a fantastic, fantastic time. Good week. And yeah, we've got a lot to cover. I don't know that any of it... Yeah, we'll see. We've got a lot to cover. Let's see. Just a couple of housekeeping. There will be a show tonight, 8 p.m. still working on the topic. So I look forward to doing that. That'll be at 7 p.m. East Coast time tonight. Tomorrow will be, again, there'll be another news roundup. I'm thinking this Sunday of doing a member's only show. If anybody has an idea for a topic, something urgent, of course, members only. So among the members, if you have any ideas for a topic, for a show, please put it in the chat or send me an email at iranbookshow.com. I remind you that INRAN Institute is a sponsor of this show. Those of you who might want to delve deeper into INRAN's ideas, and maybe some of you might consider yourself potential future intellectuals who would like to attend the INRAN Center Conference... No, not INRAN Center. INRAN Institute Conference in Austin, Texas at the end of March, which will be primarily for people who want to dig deeper who are potential ARU students and potential future intellectuals. But I think anybody can come. You can get scholarships and you can apply INRAN.org slash start here. INRAN.org slash start here. All right, let's just jump in. I'll give you a quick update on what's going on in Gaza. I didn't list it as a topic. Just assume you'll get a quick update every show if there's something to talk about, and they almost always says. In the north of Gaza, the Israeli troops are basically entering the last few neighborhoods that they had not. They've surrounded them and they are entering. They're encountering some of the fiercest resistance that we've seen since the ground operations started. Hamas is clearly cornered and the fighters in the north have nowhere to go. And so they are fighting back. And so there's fierce fighting and quite a few Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday. And I fear that many more, several more have been killed, probably killed today, given the extent of the housing of the fighting. Both of these last few neighborhoods are centers of Hamas. There are significant, significant concentrations of Hamas. What would you call it? Headquarters and logistics hubs and so on. And again, lot of house-to-house, street-to-street fighting. The same is happening in the south. Chanyunas, we talked about this yesterday, that Israel was launching a ground operation in Chanyunas. They now have, they're in the center of Chanyunas. Again, a fierce opposition, a fierce fighting. Generally, from what I'm seeing yesterday, primarily today, some of the, probably the fiercest fighting on the ground in the Gaza Strip since the war began. A lot of it is house-to-house, door-to-door, alley-to-ally. It's brutal and it's, it is, again, I think part of it, if I can say part of it, is because Israel is is restraining itself from using its air force, restraining itself in terms of bombing from the air, restraining itself in terms of softening the targets. And as a consequence, putting a lot more burden. And part of that burden is risk, a lot more risk on ground troops, Israeli troops that are fighting on the ground. This is, of course, a consequence of primarily of pressure from the Biden administration and pressure from the rest of the world.  They all have the blood of young Israeli soldiers on their hands who are dying for no reason. But these are the same political entities, these are same politicians who have the blood of thousands of American soldiers on their hands as a consequence of the wars of engagement that they enforced in Iraq and Afghanistan. So nothing new under the sun here. Now there's a reason to impeach a president. So Israel's moving particularly fast right now. It feels like it's under the clock, again, because of a position of world pressure. There is an urgency in a sense that they better get this done quickly, because the pressure, global pressure will only mount on establishing some kind of ceasefire, I think. And again, reading between the lines and from what I can tell online, Israel might have a sense of where the leadership of Hamas is. There is a chance, they think they're in Kanyunas. It's why they're moving so fast into Kanyunas, and they have specifically targets in mind, whether there turns out to be the case or not, or whether the Hamas leadership manages to escape through the tunnels to a different part of Gaza is hard to tell. Also, just in terms of casualties, you're hearing a lot of this number, 15,000 civilians killed in Gaza. For many reasons that's BS, but one of the main reasons that's BS is how many of the 15,000 are Hamas fighters? How does anybody know? Is anybody making a list? Is anybody calculating? Israel is estimating that about a third of those killed, and nobody knows how many killed total are. But about 5,000 Hamas fighters have been killed during this. So the 15,000 civilians that everybody's reporting is just a lie. A third of those, at least a third, I would guess even more than that, are Hamas fighters. If you watch videos of Hamas fighting, you will see that they wear civilian clothes, that they carry their weapons and plastic bags, that they can easily take off their bulletproof, whatever. They can dump their weapons and walk into a crowd, and they are suddenly civilians. It takes them two seconds to do that. There's literally no difference between a Hamas fighter and a civilian young man. They look the same. So the only way to tell is I guess they're carrying a weapon or not, but they can dump those weapons very quickly. So the whole way in which this is being reported, the whole way in which this is, you know, the media is doing this is exactly what we predicted, exactly what everybody predicted really. It's completely Hamas biased. That's the story. The story is Hamas dead. That's what gets people's emotions riled up. That's what sells you newspapers. Gone are the days where you actually report on the good guys' victories and the good guys' success and the good guys' defeating the bad guys in that sense. And finally, I'll just make, I just posted this on Twitter under another one of the ridiculous posts that they post. All of this could be over tomorrow. In an hour, if Hamas simply surrendered, put down its weapons, leadership surrendered, handed over the hostages, tomorrow it's over. No more civilians die. But nobody is calling for that. Literally, all of these people complaining about civilian casualties, not one of them is saying, yeah, Hamas should surrender to save its own population, their own people. Not a word. It's just, it's infuriating. All right. Related. You've probably seen this, but one of the horrors of the response to everything that's happened over the last since October 7th has been really the silence, the silence from what you call the global feminist community.  They were, again, mutilated, killed. Not a word. Not a word about this from the Me Too movement. The Me Too movement to believe that all you have to do is believe a woman.  And yet what you're hearing over and over again is people doubting the stories. People questioning the facts, the reality, the reality that's been documented by videos made by the perpetrators. I mean, this is not hard. People are questioning the facts. And then, well, Israel does bad stuff too. I get on Twitter, I get these things, newspaper articles about Israeli soldiers raping maybe a Palestinian or raping another Israeli soldier or a commander raping one of his underlings.  It happens everywhere. The difference is that when that is discovered in the Israeli military, that soldier goes to jail, prosecuted like in any law respecting country. The difference is not only the fact that here they were ordered to rape and mutilate, but they celebrated it. The commanders celebrated it with them. Nobody's been put to trial in the Gaza Strip for raping. Not a single person has. No rule of law.  I guess the Russians have done that in Ukraine as well. It was somewhat condemned in Russia, in Ukraine. Nothing. Silence. The UN, I think yesterday or therefore yesterday came out with a, the women's thing at the UN, the women's rights commission at the UN came out with a mealy-mouthed weak response. The rest of the me too. Here's, is Congresswoman Pramila Jaypal, Jayapal. I'm probably mispronouncing your name, but you can join the club. Asked about global silence of homosexual violence against Israeli women. U.S. Congresswoman Jamia Jaywal responded by discussing Israeli actions in Gaza and says that outrage must be balanced in an appearance of CNN. Jaypal is asked by anchor Dana Bash about the lack of response to the growing evidence of such allegations. The progressive member of Congress says she has condemned what Hamas has done, but I think we have to remember that Israel must comply with international humanitarian law. Morally, we cannot say that one war crime deserves another.   I think it happens, it happens, happens in war situations really. However, I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians. 15,000 Palestinians have been killed.  Anybody supporting me too, women's organizations would draw all of their support immediately. It is horrific and disgusting. To compare what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip as an act of self-defense to the explicit, motivated, celebrated rape, murder, torture, mutilation, burning of civilians by Hamas. For a U.S. Congresswoman to talk like this? For women's rights organization to talk like this? But then again, nobody should be surprised because whereas on the Iran book show we have covered the abuses of the Iranian regime of women in Iran for a year now, for over a year since the demonstrations happened, since these women started to take off their job and several of them have been murdered as a consequence. Have you heard any of the feminists talk about this? Has there been any outcry from the United Nations, condemnations of the Iranian regime for what they're doing to their own women? No. Is the way women are treated in Saudi Arabia condemned? Is the way women are treated in much of the Muslim world condemned? Are honor killings of women in the Muslim world condemned by feminist organizations? No, because they're oppressed, not the women. No. The Muslim world and it's multiculturalism. They have their culture. We have ours. Who are we to judge their culture? And when Israel does something, well, Israel's part of the West, so we have to judge them by the standard of our culture. When the Arabs do something, well, we can't judge them by our standard. We have to judge them by their standards and their standards. Wrapping women, I guess, I wonder how many Arabs would like this, is part of their culture.  It is despicable. The women's organization should be disbanded. I've talked to no end for well over 20 years about the need for the U.S. to stop funding the U.N. and to leave the U.N. Israel should leave the U.N. every Western country with any sense of pride and any sense of confidence in its own beliefs. Anybody who advocates for civilization, any civilization, should leave the United Nations immediately. They should stop funding the organization. They should move its headquarters to Riyadh or to Tehran or to Karakas. The idea that anybody with any kind of self-esteem, any kind of pride, any kind of belief in the value of civilization still belongs to the United Nations is a disgrace. And it should be something that is embarrassing to anybody who advocates for participation. All right. Let's talk about some other good news, huh? Unrelated. All right. So it turns out that there is a substantial significant decline in math scores all across, really, in most of the world today. Whoops. What happened here? Sorry. All right. There we go. Math scores across the board in decline. I'll show you this graph. This is a graph of reading and math. Orange is the United States. That darker color is OECD. First of all, you can see the reading in reading the United States is doing fantastic, which is bizarre. And OECD is just collapsing, which is weird. I don't have an explanation, but there is a real, there's something going on there with the OECD clearly in reading scores. Now, the argument is that part of this has to do with COVID and what happened with kids not going to school during COVID. But that is not enough of an explanation. These downward trends are starting before COVID. And the trend is so down that one has to wonder exactly what is going on here. You can also see on the right-hand scale, math scores in the United States have always been low, but OECD and U.S. scores have collapsed over the last few years. But particularly in the United States, particularly, I'd say the gap is bigger actually in the OECD in terms of where it started, where it's collapsing too. So seeing real declines, these are similar tests across time in similar countries with similar educational institutions. And you're seeing that. These are the exams that you're seeing here were first administered in 2000. These are the PISA edition, I guess, of OECD exams that I guess they also do in what do you call it, in the U.S.? Let me just see. Yeah, it is pretty stunning how these declines are happening. Experts have no well answers yet. The, you know, some experts are arguing for, well, the Education Secretary Miguel Cardona says we need a math revolution. I'm not sure if I trust educators today to engage in a revolution and what the results would be. So a lot of this is the pandemic, but not all of it. It is kind of scary, kind of scary. You know, this is the future generation that's going to have to maintain all of this. Let's see. What else did I want to say about? Yeah, I mean, if you look at, so this is like OECD versus U.S., but if you look at Singapore, Singapore has sustained its high ranking and the scores have not changed. Not only is it the best in the world, but it hasn't really, it's seen no decline in the years where we've seen all these others. Indeed, Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, all the Asian countries all are performed in math and science. Estonia and Canada also scored relatively well as compared to the U.S. and OECD in reigning. Ireland, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan earned top marks. They were really good. And this is in spite of the fact that, for example, Ireland and Japan spend per student less than OECD averages, averages, not the top. So from an educational perspective, big differences between countries, Asian countries obviously doing phenomenally well in math and science, but even countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, three of the four top countries in terms of reading. So generally, education outcomes at least in terms of what's measured by these tests, and I'm not saying that should be what we target, but what's measured by these tests, these countries doing dramatically better than the West and did not see the dramatic declines over the last few years. But this next study will shock you, it will surprise you, and I'm not sure how you're going to take this. But there was an experiment done in California among California schools, and I know you guys don't believe anything done in California, but bear with me. Reading schools were very low in schools in California, and so they changed curriculum. They changed the methodology by which reading was taught, and these are 70 low-performing schools. So they targeted programs of 70 low-performing schools, and first to third grade, so the time of learning how to read, and they took a really a revolutionary idea. They decided to use the principles of the science of reading to actually maybe teach reading, which means they focused on foundational skills, God forbid, I'm not suggesting anybody actually do this at home, such as phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension. And lo and behold, shockingly, scores are significantly higher than they were in the past. It's the equivalent of, they scored in reading, an equivalent of students who did an extra semester learning in math, and it actually spilled over to some of the other education that was even an improvement in mathematics among the students who learned how to read. They weren't struggling with reading, they could focus more on other things. So shockingly, it turns out, I know none of you expected this, that phonics actually works. It's one of the great crimes of the 20th and 21st century. Despite the fact that we've all known this, and I, you know, because these phonics versus other system studies are being produced, what for now, you know, 40, 50 years. With 40, 50 years, we've no phonics is the way to teach people to read, maybe for longer, right? Maybe 67 years, maybe 100 years, maybe forever we've known this. And yet it's not being universally implemented. Instead, they keep experimenting with new forms of non-phonics, with new forms of not teaching kids to read. And, you know, by all measures, kids don't know how to read, and reading scores are low, and nobody cares, nobody seems to want to do anything about it, nobody fixes it, nobody, nothing, zero. Really one of the great horrors of the last 100 years. All right, oil, surprise, surprise. The United States today, which should be surprising, but is actually a reality. The United States today is producing more oil than ever in its entire history. We're pumping out, in spite of the Biden administration, in spite of the fact that we reached peak oil, I don't know, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, tomorrow. The United States pumping out more bowels of oil today than ever before. This is to a large extent due to the fracking revolution, and the discovery of more and more and more places you can frack for oil. You can see the decline that happened really because of COVID, and then I think the hesitancy of ramping up production because of the Biden administration. But then, more recently, a significant increase in oil production has been seen. In spite of the fact that OPEC and Putin have been trying to raise oil prices, have been trying to restrict supply in the marketplace, the United States has enormous capacity and is producing oil at record levels. And as a consequence of that, all prices are relatively low, certainly lower than what Jordan Peterson was predicting a year ago. I mean, do you remember the video I did with Jordan Peterson in his profit mode telling us all that oil was heading to $300 a barrel? $300 a barrel. It is under $75 a barrel, which is pretty reasonable. A lot of less panicky exports than Jordan Peterson were expecting oil to hit $100 a barrel and to stay around $100 a barrel. Yet at $75, and you could credit the $75 a barrel primarily to the shale oil revolution in the United States, and to the fact that the U.S. is producing record numbers of oil apologizes. What would J.P. know about oil? J.P. knows about all things, and at least on the Russia thing, it seems like he got some of his talking points directly from Putin. Anyway, oil prices stable under $75 so far, so good, we'll see what happens with energy prices in Europe this year. We'll see what happens, how many people freeze to death in Europe because they're not getting natural gas from Russia, like all the experts predicted they would. We need to do a show about experts and they're catastrophizing. It turns out that the global economy is far more flexible than anybody expected. The U.S. is far more able to fill in the gap both in oil and in gas and is shipping huge quantities of liquefied natural gas to Europe. Europe amazingly built a lot of liquid natural gas terminals to accept the natural gas from the United States, so all is good, catastrophe averted. We're going to do these quickly. China debt, I've been talking about this for a long time now. The implosion of the Chinese economy, the real struggles the Chinese economies have in the real estate sector, in the finance sector, I really don't think this is over. I think this is just a rolling crisis. This is not like the U.S. financial crisis which hit a sector, primarily certain banks, particularly types of banks, mortgage banks, and particular forms of investments, mortgage-backed securities, but really underlying it all. The U.S. economy amazingly and stunningly is fairly healthy and flexible and can adjust fairly quickly, and if the government just stepped out of the way, would adjust very quickly. China, the fundamentals are sick, the fundamentals are rotten. And as a consequence, a financial crisis or a real estate crisis or another crisis just have this unbelievable impact on the rest of the economy. It's not just going to be a crisis that just affects a sector. It has ripple effects across everything. As a consequence, I think it was Moody's today. I think it was Moody's. Moody's cuts the government bonds, Chinese government credit reading. They cut it to negative from stable. It was never very high, right? But now it's negative. So government debt, this is another reason Yuan, the Chinese currency, will never become a global currency. Why would anybody want to hold Chinese bonds? Which is what you would have to do if the Chinese currency was a global currency. You wouldn't hold the currency itself. You would hold bonds just like with the U.S. Why would you want to hold a, you know, the United States dropped its rating drop, but it's still clearly investable grade here. It's negative. So China's in trouble. I'll keep documenting that. I'll keep telling, letting you know how it kind of filters through. But you're going to see significant bankruptcies that are already seeing in the property market, but you also see in financial institutions. And you'll see across the board, as the Chinese government tries to bail people out, stimulate the economy, it's not clear how it's going to do that. It's not clear how so much of Chinese wealth or pseudo wealth was held in real estate, which is now really collapsing. A lot of American wealth is held in real estate, but real estate is not going to collapse anytime soon, primarily because in the United States, we're talking about homes, primarily because there's just a shortage. There's just not enough building. It's just the reality. There's just a shortage in spite of the fact that interest rates are going up, have gone up, mortgage rates gone up, real estate prices have not come down. And now mortgage rates are coming down, real estate prices could continue to go up in spite of the fact that they're ridiculously high. And they're ridiculously high not because of anything necessary, but because of government regulations that restrict and not in my backyard, they restrict the building of more housing. This is all a supply problem, the cost of housing. All right, y'all. I don't know how many of you have ever been in the Grand Teton National Park. Grand Teton National Park, a beautiful, beautiful place, stunning views. I've actually hiked a long, long time ago. Granted, 1979 was the last time I hiked, but no, I did some shorter hikes, I guess with my wife a few years ago. But I hiked into the mountains in 79. It's just a beautiful, beautiful National Park, a lot of water, a lot of animals. And of course, the Grand Teton's in the background and the Teton's are quite magnificent. If you've never been highly encouraged you to go. Anyway, there was a parcel of land, I guess, which is adjacent or really connected to the National Park, which I guess is not technically part of the National Park, although it is used as part of the National Park. It is actually owned, owned in quotation mark by the state of Wyoming, not by the federal government. Now it turns out that this area adjacent to Teton National Park, this is Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has some of the highest real estate prices in the United States. It's probably among the most expensive places to live in the world, certainly in the U.S., real estate prices are through the roof. Anybody who has money has a home over there. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. It's very cold in the winter, but I guess, but you know, if you can survive the cold of the winter, the weather's pretty, pretty beautiful. And of course, it's a gorgeous, beautiful, stunning place. Anyway, there was about 100, what is it, how many acres? 640 acres that are basically inside the eastern border of the Grand Teton National Park that are owned by the state. And the state is like, huh, this is like worth a lot of money. It turns out that an acre is selling for at least $125,000 for an acre, $125,000. We could sell this in like net $80 million. Now, the state of Wyoming is not exactly a state of gazillion billions of dollars. That's a lot of money. And they could take that money and spend it like all governments do, very efficiently on all kinds of life-enhancing things for the citizens of Wyoming. I'm being cynical here, of course. Anyway, so they are considering selling this. And of course, the environmentalists, the, not in my backyard, the everybody else is completely flipping out. They're going nuts. How can you sell the national park? How can you sell beautiful land? How can you do this? They don't know that I'm actually an advocate of privatizing all the national parks, selling them all to the highest bidder. I don't believe the government should own any land. I don't think it should own land that's beautiful, land that's ugly, land that's in the middle, land should be privately owned. I would like to believe that the national parks will be bought by people who want to preserve them as national parks. But if they're not, people have a right to do with their land as they please. So I'm for privatizing the national parks. This is one step towards that. I'm a huge advocate of the state of Wyoming selling the 640 acres. I'd actually like them to do, to basically give it away and do a homesteading thing. You use it, it's yours. I'm kidding. But yeah, they should definitely sell it. Let it go to the person who, the people who are going to use it for the most productive purposes. All right. Finally, there is a massive protest of truckers in Poland and Slovakia. And basically what the truckers are doing is they are blocking the border crossings between Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. So they are blocking trucks coming in and out of Ukraine. And so the pictures of this, dozens of trucks just lining the border areas and blocking the intersections. And the cause of this is unsurprising. Last June, as part of the efforts to help the Ukrainian economy, the EU decided that the Ukrainian truckers, now, oh, so let me give you some background. In order to drive a truck in the EU countries, between EU countries, you have to be certified. You have to have a license from an EU, from the EU, or you have to be licensed by EU country. And out of EU truckers have to get a whole special certification, special license, and it costs a bunch of money. Anyway, in order to help the Ukrainian economy, basically the European Union said, okay, Ukrainian truckers, you can move stuff in and out of Ukraine to Poland, Slovakia, anybody who has a border with Ukraine, without actually getting this special EU license. So basically they deregulated, they got rid of regulation. And suddenly, what the Polish and Slovakian and other truckers in Europe discovered, and it turns out Poland dominates trucking in Europe, go figure, but they have the biggest trucking companies, was suddenly they got competition from Ukrainian drivers. And Ukrainian drivers probably they're being accused of getting a little creative, and maybe not only moving goods from Ukraine to Poland and Poland to Ukraine, but also once they get to Poland, maybe pick up some goods and taking them to Germany, and then competing with the Polish drivers. And the Polish drivers are like, we don't want competition. This is not fair. We didn't buy competition. What's this competition thing? We're against competition. We love free markets, as long as so cronyism. So the Polish truckers and the Slovakian truckers want Ukrainian truckers to have to buy that license. In other words, they want to reduce their competitors. They want to keep them in check. They don't want to face the competition for Ukrainian drivers driving in Europe, right? How about just if they can cross the border, they can just drive? How about how about actually allowing that in the US? We have a similar thing with Mexican drivers, Mexican trucks.  And of course, US truckers get all upset. They want all the goods to be unloaded at the Mexican border and uploaded onto their trucks. This is cronyism. One form of it. There are many forms of it, but this is one example of it in Europe. And as I said, happens in the United States as well. All right. I covered it all. I covered it all. Surprising. I thought I'd be, I thought I wouldn't have the time. But all right. There was one other story, because we have very few questions. I'm not sure what's going on. Yeah. One other quick, quick, quick story out of Russia. So you know how Russia has recruited a lot of criminals to fight at the front for it. They did this through the different private militaries. But Russia's basically kind of deal with the prison system, where if the prisoners with the justice of the prisoners will come and fight on the front for six months, they'll be released. And they've got tens of thousands of these criminals going to fight at the Russian front. Now many of them, by some estimates, maybe as high as 20,000 of them, have been killed at the front. But there are now 30,000 criminals, many of them really, really violent criminals that have now been released into Russia's society, having served their duty at the front and are now back engaged in crime inside Russia. There was just a horrific murder in some small village in Russia, where six people were dead. And one of the suspects is a known serial criminal who's been in jail most of his life, but was released because he served in the military. He served in the military. So one of the consequences in Russia of this war will be a spike in crime in Russia. There you go. One of those kind of unexpected, should have been expected, probably if you thought about it, but unexpected by people who don't think, consequences of a war in which Putin does not want to mobilize his entire population and therefore is constantly looking for shortcuts to get people to come and serve. You remember that they were trying to recruit in Cuba and the Cuba kicked them out because they were trying to recruit Cubans to come and serve in the Russian army, and they were giving them thousands of dollars to come and fight. And it turns out that they were also doing that in Nepal, and that Belize government is just a protest that in kicking out Russian recruiters trying to recruit Nepalese to come and fight in the Russian military against Ukraine.  So they're trying to find anybody and everybody they can from anyway. All right. Let's see. What else are we doing? All right. I just want to remind you that on Thursday I'll be doing a show in Hebrew, show in Hebrew on Thursday, that'll be at 11 a.m. I think east coast time, maybe 10 a.m. east coast time, 10 a.m. east coast time, 11 a.m. put a weekend time. Yes, 11 a.m. put a weekend time. 10 a.m. east coast time. It'll be in Hebrew, a show an hour and a half with boys and we'll be doing that pretty much every two weeks. We'll do a show like that every two weeks in Hebrew. So building up my audience in Israel and my Hebrew speaking audience. And if you'd like to support that, then please send me a PayPal, or if you'd like to support the show in Hebrew, send me a PayPal or show up for the show and do a super chat. Do a super chat. All right. You can also do an applause after the fact if you watch it after the fact. All right. Also on Thursday, but in the evening. So I will have three shows on Thursday. God. I will be doing the Hebrew show. I'll be doing a news roundup. And I will be doing an interview with Don Watkins about effective egoism, which is his new book. So it's available on Amazon already, although not in Kindle, a paperback. So I haven't got it yet, but I'm going to get the Kindle version when it comes out. So please go over to Amazon and buy a copy of effective egoism so you can read it quickly. Well, you won't be able to before the talk. Anyway, show up to the interview and Don is going to be fantastic. And we're going to have a great time. And it's a perfect topic, particularly for all of you who listen to the Saturday show about egoism. Suddenly, we've got a flurry of super chat questions. But in particular, Savanos stepped in with a hundred bucks. Thank you, Savanos. I was getting worried. We wouldn't even come close to I shouldn't have been worried. I trust you guys to get us to the target or at least close to it every show. Savanos says, not easy to come up with questions while at work, but here's some money anyway. That's amazing. Thank you, Savanos. Savanos, anyway, keep it up. Keep it up. Thanks for the news. Thank you, Savanos. And I hope, I hope listening to you on Bookshow at work is not a problem. And you can still stay productive. But we'd really, really appreciate the support. All right, we're $46 short. So like a $220 questions and another $10 question and we're there. So you can also, we got 125 people watching right now. If everybody just did a small, like sticker, because like I'm Mika did. Thank you, Apollo Zeus, Chad, these all people who've done stickers, Volta, Gale, and Savanos did a sticker as well early on. So Savanos has put in a big chunk, more than half of the money raised today is Savanos. So thank you, Savanos. All right, up 10 for $20. Thank you, up 10. Why does Israel insist on using the word terrorists as opposed to an opposed militants? Doesn't militants better communicate that this is a real war?  On the one hand, they want the world to think of Hamas as a terrorist organization that happens to be, you know, in what do you call it, that happens to be the governing body of a territory. But that fundamentally, it's a terrorist organization because the world has certain sanctions, different countries have certain sanctions and different attitudes and different attitude towards kind of the international law with regard to terrorists. So they constantly want to remind the world Hamas is a terrorist organization. It's not a legitimate government. It's not a legit government. On the other hand, so I think that's good and that's legitimate given how the world is structured and the way the world is. But I think it's important for Israel to actually view this as a war with Gaza, that it's a much broader war and these terrorists are the official army of the Gaza Strip. And so I think that Israel is trying to soften the world's response by pleading that this is, these are terrorists we're dealing with and therefore we can be really, really tough. You know, is that the right strategy? It's a PR question, not a reality question, but Israel does whatever it can to appease. Cigar, I think this is Cigar's first super chat question. So thank you, Cigar. Really appreciate the support. I can't pronounce this guy's name. Saif Dean Amos, who's an economist and a big Bitcoiner, but also a real hater of Israel, released YouTube interview with Jeremy Hammond on Israel Palestinian history. You will disagree with much. Might you do a show on it? I mean, you say I disagree with much as if this is some kind of subjective competition. They are wrong. They make it up. They lie about the history of Israel and of the Palestinian conflict. They choose their facts selectively. They're basically lying and they're making stuff up. So and you know, you can see this partially by the vitriol and the hatred that Amos Amos, so however you pronounce his name, express this towards Israel and has towards me. But so look, I could do that, but the problem would be that every statement they would make, I could spend a half an hour debunking it, right? Showing you that it's wrong. But they probably discussed for an hour. I mean, there's no way I could get through the whole thing. And there's no way I could respond. You know, you have enough time to respond. But I have responded. I mean, I have done dozens of hours over the last 20 years of history, and Ilan Juno has done, but I just I have done dozens of hours of history about the Middle East, about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, about the players, about the history, about what happened, what didn't happen, about the moral standing of each side. I've said everything there is that I can think of saying.  I will not debate Finkelstein.  Why would I debate Finkelstein? I mean, I'd rather debate Amos. I mean, I'm not going to debate him, but he's much better than Finkelstein. Finkelstein is like the worst of the worst. Why would you want me to debate Finkelstein? What benefit is it to the world for me to debate Finkelstein? How in some bites am I going to convince anything that this guy is wrong? If you're really interested in the topic, listen to Finkelstein. Listen to me. Read up a little bit of history and make up your mind. Now, I would get a lot of views if I debated Finkelstein, so maybe I should do it for that, right? I would get a lot of views if I did a video analyzing Amos and Hammond's discussion. I would debate David Deutsch. I don't know that David wants to debate. I don't know why he would want to debate, but and I'm not sure I'm the right person to debate David Deutsch. David is an expert in the field we would be debating in a way that I'm not an expert in that field. I don't think David would want to debate me on economics or maybe even on ethics. I don't know, but for me to debate David on epistemology would be, I think, potentials of me. But you know, Greg Salamieri or Uncle Garte should be debating David Deutsch and epistemology, right? I think. But wonderful. Arrange the debate.  We can do it in Oxford. Maybe there's even a venue. David can maybe there's some. I've said this to the Oxford Papa Society. Let's do an event with me and David. Maybe it doesn't have to be debate. Maybe it can be a discussion, but I'm happy to do that. And but it doesn't seem like there's real interest on the other side. So I don't know if David's interested in it, but I don't know the Papa Society is interested in it. But I would love to come to Oxford to do that. I can, I can give you dates now if you would make, if you would help that make that happen. I'm in UK at some point. Why not have him host me at Oxford for a discussion? That would be and we can videotape that that would be so much better than I'm in UK. Sorry, I'm in UK, but all right. So I don't know. I'll look at the, I'll look at the YouTube interview. And I'll see if it's worth commenting on. But really, I've said so much about that history that I'm not sure I have anything new to say that I haven't already said.  But I just don't see how to do it otherwise because I'd have to repeat everything I've said over many, many years. Whoops. All right. Paul says, did you read about someone short, someone short-selling stocks in Israel five days before the massacre? Yes. I mean, there's a rumor going around that Hamas basically shorted Israeli stocks in the American stock market, and the Nasdaq, I think, and made a lot of money after October 7th.  Now, let me just be clear. Done a little bit of research and none of these stories have been verified yet. That is, there's no confirmation that it actually happened. But would it surprise me? No. I think there was some money that was probably made after 9-11 by certain elements affiliated with al-Qaeda shorting stocks in the NYC. I don't know if that was ever verified, but certainly that was believed to be true at the time or there were some rumors about that. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know if it happened or not. I wouldn't be surprised. It wouldn't shock me. I mean, why would it shock you? It would surprise you or do anything else. Part of the course for murderous homicidal criminals. Raphael says, Caesar died March 15th. Jesus, Nisan 15th. Julius' murder is Longinus. Longinus sticks a spear in Jesus, one betrayed by genius other than other by Judas.  I doubt it. I doubt it, but I don't know. I do not know that history well. I do not know the sequence of events. I know Jesus and Julius is two separate people in history. There's probably a lot of coincidence that you can name, but I don't know that there is a fact between the two. I know that James Valiant suggests this. I haven't read Valiant's book, so I'm not going to comment. I can't comment. Mike says, thanks your honor, rare opportunity to see a live show, $50. Thank you, Mike. Really, really appreciate that. Thanks for the support. The Godfather says, the daily wire has the TV and movie rights for Atlas Shrugged. Are you or anyone from your right talks with them despite your reservations of daily wire? Do you think they will do ran justice? I have been in talks, but it's been a long time, so I don't know what's happened. I don't know what daily wire plans are to do. They have the TV rights, the serial rights. I don't think they have the movie rights, but anyway, they have rights. They plan to do a series. I don't know where that stands. I talked to them, I don't know, seven, eight months ago, and I talked to the writer that they had chosen, and he seemed pretty serious and enthused and engaged, and I think we engaged a couple of emails, and then he kind of dropped off the face of us and he disappeared. So I don't know what's going on. I will try to find out. I think their option expires soon, so it'll be a question of do they, what do you call it, renew the option or not? Can they do justice to Rand? I mean, generally my answer is probably not, but that's because I don't think anybody can do justice on Rand. That is, no TV series or movie, I think made today, can live up to the aesthetic qualities of the book, because I just don't think that that level of artists out there, they're good artists with simple material, but the kind of material Atlas shrugged is the complexity, the symbolism, and the depth, how to communicate that visually in a way that would do justice, no. The fear is, not that it doesn't do justice, it can't. The fear is that it will do harm.  So I think that they do a decent job. The question there is, can they leave religion out of it? Can they have enough of understanding of Rand's philosophy to present it in a way that's consistent with the philosophy of not undermining it? I think the answers are they can. Will they? Is a different question. I don't know. I just don't know. And again, I haven't been in touch with them in a while and I don't know what the status of the project is, but I will try to establish contact and see if there is any connection. I mean, the writer listens to the Iran book show sometimes, so he might be listening to the show and might hear me say and might contact me, but maybe I just need to reach out and I will I know they were in touch with Leonard, they were in touch with some other people. So they were in touch, but I haven't heard anything in months, literally months and months. So I really don't know what's going on. And Mirkat says something in Italian that I cannot read or understand. But I think he suggests flattening Gaza, ending Gaza. Scott says, Peacock already got them to agree to no religion, no libertarianism. And he knows this, how? I love it when people speak without knowing, without knowing. What does it mean, got them to agree? Did they sign literally a contract saying they wouldn't do that? All right, anyway. Beware of what you hear from Scott as if it's present when it's presented as fact. Jacob said Zelensky is turning Ukrainian into an authoritarian state just like Russia says Kiev mayor Kalashenko. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if Vitaliy is arrested, because if somebody says that about Russia, they're arrested. So we'll see if he's arrested, put in jail. And Zelensky is more authoritarian than he should be at this at this point in time. It had been reported, Scott says, the only I wonder who reported it. I wonder who knows to be able to report. I reported something related to that, but I don't know anybody else who would have reported it. Andrew says, do you view the moral equivalence between Israel and Palestinians as largely caused by cowardice or moral intellectual unclarity? Oh, you're being way too generous. I viewed as a consequence of evasion, a consequence of hatred. You know, somebody says, debate Dave Smith. I will not debate Dave Smith. I've said why I will not debate Dave Smith. Stop asking. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to debate him. I'm not going to debate Scott Honton or whatever his name is. I'm not going to debate them. No way. It's not going to happen. Do you view the moral? It's evasion. It's evasion and hatred. And yeah, there's a bit of cowardice in some people. There's unclarity in others, but unclarity sounds way too nice. This is out and out evasion driven by hatred of the good, for being the good, the hatred of Israel, is motivating most of this. John, final question. Hi, Ron. I just wanted to say thank you for being a standard bearer for Rand's work. Your own work equal is unfair, has given great value to me in my life. Thank you, John. I really, really appreciate that. And I'm glad my book resonates with people. I do need to do a show updating the whole issue of inequality, at least from an economic perspective. All right. Thanks, everybody. I will see you all tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. The topic to be determined, I will advertise it on Twitter and on YouTube, what the topic will be. I hope you can join me then. And if not, there'll be a news roundup show tomorrow morning, as there is every weekday morning. Bye, everyone. Thanks to all the superchatters. You were great. Thank you, particularly Sivanos. And we got 50 from West, and we got 50 from Maik, so really, really appreciate you guys. Thank you.


He was doing very well in the Monticulo, he was commanding his pitch well and he had confidence in the Monticulo and the pitch inside, he was doing very well and that's what he needs to win the game. Did you mention that quick pace? Is it easy to play behind a guy that works that fast? Yes, of course. It's very easy to do defense with a quick pace that always attacks the strikers. Yes, of course, it's very good. He works that way because it's his way of playing and he was doing very well and working that way and the time he was here was also very good. Right now in baseball there are so many extremely talented young players. Is there more extra motivation you have to prove that you're one of those guys? Right now in the big league there are so many young players doing very good work. Is there more extra motivation you have to prove that you're one of those young players with a lot of talent in this league? Yes, I feel very good about the season that I'm having right now and I'm going to keep finishing strong until the end and keep helping the team as much as I can and I'm going to keep winning the game that's what we need as a team right now. Yes, I feel really good with the season that I'm having up to this point and at the same time I'm helping my team and that's what we want. You want to help your team, you want to help your team win.


SNES DRUNK! Tetris Attack is kind of a misleading title. The familiar Tetris shapes are completely done away with because the blocks rise up from the bottom instead of fall from the top. So instead of the usual Tetris fare, you arrange blocks by swapping them horizontally two at a time. Three blocks in a row of the same color and shape will clear them from the screen, and anything on top of them will fall into place, which can create combos, as you might expect. The more blocks you do away with, the faster they rise, and the game is over when the blocks fill the entire playing field. But what I really like about the core gameplay is that you can still move pieces around even as you get three blocks in a row, so if you think quickly enough, you can arrange combos just as pieces are falling and disappearing. So yeah, there's really not much attack in going on here, and not a whole lot to do with Tetris either. But as it is, it's the best puzzle game on the Super Nintendo, and I say that not only because the gameplay is so addicting, but because this game really knows how to screw with your emotions. When you play this game in single player mode, everything starts out very slow. You know, to make sure you understand what you're doing. In fact, it's worth mentioning real quick that there's a big ass tutorial on the main menu that's full of all sorts of helpful stuff in case you're having trouble getting the hang of it. Anyway, you cruise through the first world, coast through the second world, and you're lulled into this false sense of security thanks to the easy, relaxing, calming music that says, hey, everything's alright, okay?  Ah, just cruisin' along here.  I'm kidding around, but I really like how this game does this. There isn't another puzzle game I've found that pulls this effect off as well as this one does. A good puzzle game knows how to effectively manipulate the player's emotions like that, so as relaxing as Tetris Attack is, it can be every bit as stressful. I don't know of any other Super Nintendo puzzle game that gives me that feeling.  For example, I've always loved Busta Move, but it gets a little dull after 15 minutes or so. Pieces is a fun puzzle game, but it's a thousand times better with a second player. The same could be said for Wario's Woods. And even then, the most fun had is just screwing with your opponent. Tetris Battle Gaiden comes close, I suppose, but it's just not as intense, or conversely, not as relaxing. Tetris Attack gives you more bang for your buck just based on the basic gameplay alone. Anyway, this is the odd puzzle game that has a story mode, where you go head-to-head with computer-controlled opponents. And not only that, there are six different endings to see, depending on the difficulty setting. For other game modes, there's the endless feature, which is, as you'd expect. There's a two-minute time limit mode. There's a puzzle mode where you have a set number of moves to use in order to clear out all the blocks. And of course, there's two-player head-to-head mode. So yeah, I just wanted to do a video on Tetris Attack because it's one of those versatile games that offers a lot of different ways you can approach it. You can zone out in endless mode, which is like the video game equivalent of Xanax. You can take out an opponent, either a friend or the computer.  There's puzzle mode, which is a little like Mode B in the original Tetris. And there's hardcore stress test mode that will make you sweat from your tongue. There's not many other puzzle games out there that make that kind of range. So go check out Tetris Attack. It's the best puzzle game on the Super Nintendo.


So I received a comment recently that was interesting. It asked me about a certain company I think it was 1hourtranslations.com and it asked what I thought about this company if it was legit if it was good if it Was bad etc and and I've and I've I've received a couple of these of questions like this in in the past people ask me about specific companies and Whether I you know, I've worked with them if I think they're legitimate or if I think they're scams or not Usually I never hear about these companies But then I search for them and try to get an impression and just let them know what I feel and I you know I let them know whoever asks I tell them I haven't worked with this company before but this is what I think so today I kind of just wanted to show you the process that I go through when I hear about a new company If it's a company that I'm gonna be working with or if you just ask me about the company or anything like that This is the process that I go through so from now on if people ask me about certain companies I'll probably refer them to this video Just so you can do your own research and that way you can get your own idea about any company that comes across your radar and And you have the tools necessary to evaluate if it's a company you want to work for or not so I think the best way to do this is to do a screenshot and Where you can see me go through the process of looking up a company. So let's do that So usually where I start off is pros. Yeah, actually it's the pros.com blue board And I've mentioned this before but first of all pros comm is the main translation website for freelance translators And the blue board is where they list all the companies and they give them a score in general The scores should be around five or high fours if it's anything lower like three and definitely 2.2 then that's That's a red flag. That's a bad sign For example, we'll take, you know, we'll take this one and see what it says this studio moreto group It has as you can see Lately So what it has is is well actually just desperate is it's all a bunch of bad ones at the beginning You can see actually start off with a bunch of fives Then there was just one one then another one here and then they've delayed our payment for years please cherish your reputation in the translation market and apparently they don't cherish it because a bunch of people have problems and So anyway, let's do this I want to do this again because I was contacted about a specific group called one-hour translation And I've seen this around quite a few times. So I thought it would be worth looking into here We go one hour translation right away. We see they have Their base out of Cyprus apparently and they have a 3.8 This is not very good. And in fact, we see lately They have a debt to pay me since August I posted a critical comment including a new hybrid translation And was banned from their website without notice although my last payment is still pending So it seems like they have issues with payment more than anything. Otherwise, these are all good Now usually most agencies will just have five And you know, that's kind of the standard on this website and you get a different feel for different websites How they work, but that's how it usually works here again didn't receive payment I advise them to redo a translation had to prove free the text was awful I was blocked as a vendor that doesn't seem very nice unethical unprofessional behavior And so yeah, these are the bad things. Obviously, they're good ones as well But to me, this is a red flag when you see 3.8 and past 12 months 3.2 This is not good. Once again, that you know, usually here, they're all five Someone will give even if one person gives a two or a one, you know, the rest will be five and That's usually how it happens. So this is actually quite bad Also, because once you give Once you give this you can actually change it So what happens is sometimes people aren't getting paid and they're like, oh, this company hasn't paid me in three months They're six months or whatever they give a one and then the company does pay them because they want to get rid of that And so they'll raise it, you know And they'll give it like a three or four and say oh the company finally paid me so I raised my rate So the fact that obviously this company one-hour translation hasn't even bothered to try to follow up or try to raise these That's also a red flag to me, right? So anyway, and if you're not sure about this what you can also do is check the forums to see if anyone's talking about anything pros.com has its own forums and Here you can search for one-hour translation. There you go until I did the search for him already and and then you get to see a bit, you know, what some people are talking about and You know, you can just scroll around and see what it says here Let's see what One-hour translation. There we go. I used to start working for low-cost translation websites such as one hour translation or the Spanish Bebe like blah blah blah, so basically a low-cost translation website It seems like one of those websites that don't pay you much. They obviously don't seem to care very much if they pay you or not and And yeah, so I don't know to me. It's a couple red flags Now if you're still not sure though because you know, it was kind of ambiguous There were quite a few fives and everything like that. Then there are there are definitely other places you can check usually for me the second place that I check is translatorscafe.com if it would load and Sorry about this lately. I've been having some issues. So and actually I should show you here one-hour translation I spelt it all attached. Maybe if you do like this now sometimes if you do various different variations of of the company name some other things pop up like let's try one-hour translation But no, these are all obviously different So yeah, and pros usually does a good job of combining them when they should be combined into into one company so here we go and First of all, this is a very confusing website to me. So you'll forgive me if but no first of all you can check the discussion forums and Never remember how to do out here. Do the search. I guess one hour translation. There we go Let's see what pops up Warrant scammers pretending to be Genco. I'm not sure Maybe they're pretending to be Genco one-hour translation.com. I've checked a little more And while the two agencies named Genco have more or less the same setup working methods and payment schedule the websites are dissimilar And I may have made a mistake thinking that Genco is also one-hour translation Well, they're not there are different companies I know that and actually there I would head back to here because as I mentioned The pros is usually very good at combining different websites, you know Even when sometimes they do try to be different or try to come up with a separate name because their first name has a bad reputation Pros comm is good at combining them, but here it shows it's a different company Genco. Yeah, I mean again quite heard of before so I do know and anyway So there you go. There's another place you can go if you want under translators cafe and If I find it I think it was under community as well There we go community. Oh Hall of Fame and shame. There we go And this is this functions pretty much just like the blue board under pros And here you can see one hour translation except as you can see they don't combine them and I don't know So it makes it kind of confusing also because here we have one star and you have five stars Now actually what so I've been going at this for a while So I can notice a certain red flag here And that's that this is an affiliate link an affiliate link means someone who gets paid to refer you to this company So if I click on this and then I use one hour translation and end up doing business with them. This gets tracked basically my You know my ISP or something gets tracked and this guy here gets paid So anytime there's an affiliate, of course, they're gonna give it five stars because they want you to click on this website and use it But here I see two users have rated this one and have both given it apparently one star So that's what I'm going to trust. I think more than anything You can click on it You can click on it and you get this it seems like I haven't paid my dues to translators cafe Translators cafe is actually it's a free website But yeah, you don't have access to everything when you don't pay I thought I had access to the Hall of Fame and shame, but apparently I don't because I'm not a master member So if you're a master member, you can see more details, but either way you can see the the rating they give Now before I sign off that usually this is all you need to more or less get an idea because these are both very Translation specific pros and translators cafe, but if you're still not sure that certain other things you can do You can just do exactly a search for one hour translation and review That's what I usually do And you'll have here you have two things you have glass door and Yelp So glass door is a website that rates them from the perspective of employees So if you're working there and it rates how it is to work there and that's 3.2 So that's what I would trust more than anything if you're going to work for For one hour translation Yelp as you know reviews it from the point of view as a consumer and here It's 3.5. So you can make of it what what you wish I don't know if I'm gonna you're I'll just click on it quickly just to Show you more or less How it works great company and people current employee anonymous employee So, you know, this person seems to like it used to be a great agency no more Amazing place to start a career Quality but it gives it three stars. So I'm not sure good, but should be employee inclusive good service messy management So, I don't know, you know here here. It's a bit all over the board. So And actually this shows you well because many times I mean look if it's a scam it gets quite obvious It's a scam one hour translation does not seem to be a scam But it does seem to be quite iffy and so it you know, it goes back to the low-cost Translations if it's low cost then maybe you can Go for it, but otherwise. I don't know Here there's one other place that I want to share with you Although I really don't have much luck with this here BB the this is a better business bureau. So this is for companies in the states It said it was based out of Cyprus, but for some reason they have it listed here Although it's not BBB accredited, but it gives it an A plus And then it has one negative review. So this literally could not be more confusing I don't know what's going on here composite score 3.68 Two customer complaints. I really don't know what's happening. Let's click on the customer review to see what it says And you'll get an idea beware of I guess like that the numbers just robbed me I've been working for blah blah blah blah blah and they give a comment your clearly a translator for one hour translation It's such a service provider suggesting you contact of translators. So anyway So this is precisely a translator worker for them to have a problem with them Let's look at the two customer complaints When you're go ahead document with 150 words translated by them Pre-estimate with four under words still paid blah blah blah. Anyway, this is a This is a client who had a problem with them I've purchased a certificate translation for this business and was given a time frame and then several mistakes They needed correcting and did not yeah, so you know again here just seems like a low-cost kind of thing So what's your conclusion the conclusion is always a judgment call right if you're desperate for cash and you're you know You'll want to work anywhere then sure look up one hour translation and see but it seems like they're not very reliable I would jump ship as soon as you can find someone else That's better here. I want to show you something that is a bit more and This is a company that I had problems with and so I'm going to show this just because I uh I want to give them negative publicity in the time I can I mean they're not in business anymore really But so here I was working for inter Trotto And you can see inter Trotto's seems to be doing very well It has five and this is out of spain but inter Trotto or Trado or whatever is uh, this one based in Italy has a very low score And it's run by this lady from Jessica genie And I mean it was basically a scam and uh, you you can see it has ones ones ones And it does have this five, uh, but this five, you know, because then I remember clicking on this guy one entry It's obviously that this is a fake account. There's some friend of hers who who, you know Wrote it up. But anyway, all the other ones gave one And uh, and they say yeah terrible experience such a tiny solvent. They basically means, you know, it's a company with no money Um, and I obviously also gave it a one And uh, so what you can see here is this outsource has been banned from posting jobs at pros.com And that'll that's what'll happen if you get too many bad reviews And uh, so anyway, I do think pros.com does a very good job And that's why the first place I go is always I check the blue board at pros.com And so if I were you that's the first thing I would do anytime you hear about a new company Enter the name pros.com Slash blue board and enter the name here and see what pops up Then you can do all the other research if you want to clarify it or or what have you but This is the first place to look so anyway, I hope this helps And uh, so anytime you hear of a new translation company or contacted by one I would go here first. This is literally what I still do all the time because it is an invaluable resources that they provide