CHAPTER VII To run up the inclined surface of the palisade and drop to the ground outside was the work about a moment, or would have been but for knobs. I had to put my rope about him, after we reached the top, lift him over the sharpened stakes, and lure him upon the outside. To find a juror in the unknown country to the north seemed rather hopeless, yet I could do no less than try, praying in the meanwhile, that she would come through unscathed and in safety to her father. As knobs and I swung along in the growing light of the coming day I was impressed by the lessening numbers of savage beasts the farther north I travelled. With the decrease among the carnivora, the herbivora increased in quantity, though anywhere in Kaspack they are sufficiently plentiful to furnish ample food for the meat-eaters of each locality. The wild cattle, antelope, deer, and horses I passed showed changes in evolution from their cousins farther south. The kind were smaller and less shaggy, the horses larger. North of the Krolub village I saw a small band of the latter about the size of those of our old western plains, such as the Indians bred in former days, and to a lesser extent even now. They were fat and sleek, and I looked upon them with covetous size and with thoughts that any old cow-puncher may well imagine I might entertain after having hoofed it for weeks. But they were wary, scarce permitting me to approach within bow and arrow range, much less within roping distance, yet I still had hopes which I never discarded. Twice before noon we were stalked and charged by man-eaters, but even though I was without firearms I still had ample protection in knobs, who evidently had learned something of Kaspackian hunt-rules under the tutelage of Ducine or some other gallo, and of course a great deal more by experience. He always was on the alert for dangerous foes, invariably warning me by low growls of the approach of a large carnivorous animal, long before I could either see or hear it. And then when the thing appeared he would run snapping at its heels, drawing the charge away from me until I found safety in some tree. Yet never did the wily knobs take an unnecessary chance of a mauling. He would dart in and away so quickly that not even the lightning-like movements of the great cats could reach him. I have seen him tantalize them thus until they fairly screamed in rage. The greatest inconvenience the hunters caused me was the delay, for they have an nasty habit of keeping one treed for an hour or more if balked in their designs. But at last we came inside of a line of cliffs running east and west across our path, as far as the eye could see in either direction, and I knew that we reached the natural boundary which marks the line between the Krolu and Galu countries. The southern face of these cliffs loomed high and forbidding, rising to an altitude of some two hundred feet, sheer and precipitous, without a break that the eye could perceive. How I was to find a crossing I could not guess, whether to search to the east toward the still lofty air barrier cliffs fronting upon the ocean or westward in the direction of the inland sea was a question which baffled me. Were there many passes or only one I had no way of knowing. I could but trust a chance. It never occurred to me that Knobbs had made the crossing at least once, possibly a greater number of times, and that he might lead me to the pass, and so it was with no idea of assistance that I appealed to him as a man alone with a dumb brute so often does. Knobbs, I said, how the devil are we going to cross those cliffs? I do not say that he understood me, even though I realized that an air-dale is a mighty intelligent dog, but I do swear that he seemed to understand me, for he wheeled about, barking joyously and trotting off toward the west, and when I didn't follow him he ran back to me, barking furiously, and at last taking hold of the calf of my leg in an effort to pull me along in the direction he wished me to go. Now, as my legs were naked and Knobbs' jaws are much more powerful than he realizes, I gave in and followed him, for I knew that I might as well go west as east, as far as any knowledge I had of the correct direction went. We followed the base of the cliffs for a considerable distance. The ground was rolling and tree-dotted and covered with grazing animals, alone, in pairs and in herds, a motley aggregation of the modern and extinct herbivore of the world, a huge woolly mastodon stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant fern, a mighty bull with enormous up-curving tusks. Near him grazed an oryx bull with a cow and a calf, close beside a lone rhinoceros asleep in a dust-hole. Deer, antelope, bison, horses, sheep, and goats were all in sight at the same time, and at a little distance a great megatherium reared up on its huge tail and massive hind feet to tear the leaves from a tall tree. The forgotten past rubbed flanks with the present, while Tom Billings, modern of the moderns, passed in the garb of preglacial man, and before him trotted a creature of a breed scarce sixty years old. Knobbs was a parvenu, but it failed to worry him. As we neared the inland sea we saw more flying reptiles and several great amphibians, but none of them a tactus. As we were topping a rise in the middle of the afternoon I saw something that brought me to a sudden stop. Calling knobs in a whisper I cautioned him to silence, and kept him at heel while I threw myself flat and watched from behind a sheltering shrub, a body of warriors approaching the cliff from the south. I could see that they were galloos, and I guessed that Ducine led them. They had taken a shorter route to the past, and so had overhauled me. I could see them plainly, for they were no great distance away, and saw with relief that Ajar was not with them. The cliffs before them were broken and ragged, those coming from the east overlapping the cliffs from the west, into the defile formed by this overlapping, the party filed. I could see them climbing upward for a few minutes, and then they disappeared from view. When the last of them had passed from sight I rose and bent my steps in the direction of the past, the same past toward which knobs had evidently been leading me. I went warily as I approached it, for fear the party might have halted to rest. If they hadn't halted I had no fear of being discovered, for I had seen that the galloos marched without point, flankers, or rear guard. And when I reached the pass and saw a narrow one-man trail leading upward at a stiff angle I wished that I were chief of the galloos for a few weeks. A dozen men could hold off forever in that narrow pass, all the hordes which might be brought up from the south, yet there at lay entirely unguarded. The galloos might be a great people in Taspac, but they were pitifully inefficient in even the simpler forms of military tactics. I was surprised that even a man in the Stone Age should be so lacking in military perspicacity. Ducine dropped far below par in my estimation, as I saw the slovenly formation of his troop as it passed through an enemy country, and entered the domain of the chief against whom he had risen in revolt. But Ducine must have known Jor the chief and known that Jor would not be waiting for him at the pass. Nevertheless he took unwarranted chances. With one squad of a home-guard company I could have conquered Taspac. Nobs and I followed to the summit of the pass, and there we saw the party defiling into the galloos country, the level of which was not, on an average, over fifty feet below the summit of the cliffs and about a hundred and fifty feet above the adjacent crolu domain. Immediately the landscape changed. The trees, the flowers and the shrubs were of a hardier type, and I realized that at night the gallooblanket might be almost a necessity. Acacia and eucalyptus predominated among the trees, yet there were ash and oak and even pine and fir and hemlock. The tree-life was riotous. The forests were dense and peopled by enormous trees. From the summit of the cliff I could see forests rising hundreds of feet above the level upon which I stood, and even at the distance they were from me, I realized that the bowls were of gigantic size. At last I had come to the galloo country. Though not conceived in Caspac, I, indeed, come up Corsvaggio. From the beginning I had come up through the hideous horrors of the lower Caspacian spheres of evolution, and I could not but feel something of the elation and pride which had filled Tomar and so all when they realized that the call had come to them, and they were about to rise from the estate of Bandlouz to that of Croluz. I was glad that I was not Batu. But where was Ajor? Though my eyes searched the wide landscape before me, I saw nothing other than the warriors of Ducine and the beasts of the fields and the forests. Surrounded by forests I could see wide plains dotting the country as far as the eye could reach, but nowhere was a sign of a small galloooshie, the beloved she whom I would have given my right hand to see. Nobs and I were hungry. We had not eaten since the preceding night, and below us was game-deer, sheep, anything that a hungry hunter might crave. So down the steep trail we made our way, and then upon my belly with nobs crouching low behind me, I crawled toward a small herd of red deer feeding at the edge of a plain, close beside a forest. There was ample cover, what with solitary trees and dotting bushes, so that I found no difficulty in stocking up wind to within fifty feet of my quarry, a large, sleek doe unaccompanied by a fawn. Greatly then did I regret my rifle. Never in my life had I shot an arrow, but I knew how it was done, and fitting the shaft to my string I aimed carefully and let drive. At the same instant I called to nobs and leaked to my feet. The arrow caught the doe full in the side, and in the same moment nobs was after her. She turned to flee with the two of us pursuing her, nobs with his great fangs bared and I with my short spear poised for a cast. The balance of the herd sprang quickly away, but the hurt doe lagged, and in a moment nobs was beside her and had leaped at her throat. He had her down when I came up, and I finished her with my spear. It didn't take me long to have a fire going and a steak broiling, and while I was preparing for my own feast, nobs was filling himself with raw venison. Never have I enjoyed a meal so heartily. For two days I searched fruitlessly back and forth from the inland sea almost to the barrier cliffs for some trace of a jor, and always I trended northward, but I saw no sign of any human being, not even the band of Galoo warriors under Duceen. And then I commenced to have misgivings. Had Shalaz spoken the truth to me when he said that Ajor had quit the village of the Krolu, might he not have been acting upon the orders of Altan, in whose savage bosom might have lurked some small spark of shame that he had attempted to do to death one who had befriended a Krolu warrior, a guest who had brought no harm upon the Krolu race, and thus have sent me out upon a fruitless mission in the hope that the wild beast would do what Altan hesitated to do? I did not know, but the more I thought upon it, the more convinced I became that Ajor had not quitted the Krolu village. But if not, what had brought Duceen forth without her? There was a puzzler, and once again I was all at sea. On the second day of my experience of the Galoo country, I came upon a bunch of as magnificent horses as it has ever been my lot to see. They were dark bays with blazed faces and perfect sursingles of white about their barrels. Their forelegs were white to the knees. In height they stood almost sixteen hands, the mares being a trifle smaller than the stallions, of which there were three or four in this band of a hundred, which comprised many colts and half-grown horses. Their markings were almost identical, indicating a purity of strain that might have persisted since long ages ago. If I had coveted one of the little ponies of the Krolu country, imagine my state of mind when I came upon these magnificent creatures. No sooner had I aspired them than I determined to possess one of them, nor did it take me long to select a beautiful young stallion, a four-year-old, I guessed him. The horses were grazing close to the edge of the forest in which knobs and eye were concealed, while the ground between us and them was dotted with clumps of flowering brush which offered perfect concealment. The stallion of my choice grazed with a filly and two yearlings a little apart from the balance of the herd and nearest to the forest and to me. At my whispered charge, knobs flattened himself to the ground and I knew that he would not again move until I called him, unless danger threatened me from the rear. Carefully I crept forward toward my unsuspecting quarry, coming undetected to the concealment of a bush not more than twenty feet from him. Here I quietly arranged my noose, spreading it flat and open upon the ground. To step to one side of the bush and throw directly from the ground, which is the style I am best in, would take but an instant, and in that instant the stallion would doubtless be under way at top speed in the opposite direction. Then he would have to wheel about when I surprised him, and in doing so he would most certainly rise slightly upon his hind feet and throw up his head, presenting a perfect target for my noose as he pivoted. Yes, I had it beautifully worked out, and I waited until he should turn in my direction. At last it became evident that he was doing so, when apparently without cause the filly raised her head, knade, and started off at a trot in the opposite direction, immediately followed of course by the colts and my stallion. It looked for a moment as though my last hope was blasted, but presently their fright, if fright it was, passed, and they resumed grazing again a hundred yards farther on. This time there was no bush within fifty feet of them, and I was at a loss as to how to get within safe roping distance. Anywhere under forty feet I am an excellent roper, at fifty feet I am fair, but over that I knew it would be a matter of luck if I succeeded in getting my noose about that beautiful arch's neck. As I stood debating the question in my mind I was almost upon the point of making the attempt at the long throw. I had plenty of rope, this gallow weapon being fully sixty feet long, how I wished for the collies from the ranch. At a word they would have circled this little bunch and driven it straight down to me, and then it flashed into my mind that Nobbs had run with those collies all one summer, that he had gone down to the pasture with them after the cows every evening, and done his part in driving them back to the milking barn, and had done it intelligently, but Nobbs had never done the thing alone, and it had been a year since he had done it at all. However the chances were more in favor of my foosling the long throw than that Nobbs would fall down in his part if I gave him the chance. When come to a decision I had to creep back to Nobs and get him, and then with him at my heels return to a large bush near the four horses. Here we could see directly through the bush, and pointing the animals out to Nobs I whispered, Thatchum boy! In an instant he was gone, circling wide toward the rear of the quarry. They caught sight of him almost immediately and broke into a trot away from him, but when they saw that he was apparently giving them a wide berth they stopped again, though they stood watching him with high-held heads and quivering nostrils. It was a beautiful sight, and then Nobbs turned in behind them and trotted slowly back toward me. He did not bark, nor come rushing down upon them, and when he had come closer to them he proceeded at a walk. The splendid creatures seemed more curious than fearful, making no effort to escape until Nobbs was quite close to them. Then they trotted slowly away, but at right angles. And now the fun and trouble commenced. Nobs, of course, attempted to turn them, and he seemed to have selected the stallion to work upon, for he paid no attention to the others, having intelligence enough to know that a lone dog could run his legs off before he could round up four horses that didn't wish to be rounded up. The stallion, however, had notions of his own about being headed, and the result was as pretty a race as one could care to see. Gad, how that horse could run. He seemed to flatten out and shoot through the air with the very minimum of exertion, and at his forefoot ran Nobs, doing his best to turn him. He was barking now, and twice he leaped high against the stallion's flank, but this cost too much effort and always lost him ground, as each time he was hurled heels overhead by the impact. Yet before they disappeared over a rise in the ground, I was sure that Nobs' persistence was bearing fruit. It seemed to me that the horse was giving way a trifle to the right. Nobs was between him and the main herd, to which the yearning and filly had already fled. As I stood waiting for Nobs' return, I could not but speculate upon my chances should I be attacked by some formidable beast. I was some distance from the forest and armed with weapons in the use of which I was quite untrained, though I had practiced some with the spear since leaving the Krolu country. I must admit that my thoughts were not pleasant ones, verging almost upon cowardice until I chanced to think of Little Ajor alone in this same land and armed only with a knife.  But in thinking the matter over since, I have come to the conclusion that my state of mind was influenced largely by my approximate nakedness. If you have never wandered about in broad daylight, garbed in a bit of red deerskin, in inadequate length, you can have no conception of the sensation of futility that overwhelms one. Clothes to a man accustomed to wearing clothes impart a certain self-confidence. Lack of them induces panic. But no beast attacked me, though I saw several menacing forms passing through the dark aisles of the forest. At last I commenced a worry over Nob's protracted absence and to fear that something had befallen him. I was coiling my rope to start out in search of him when I saw the stallion leap into view at almost the same spot behind which he had disappeared, and at his heels ran Nob's, neither was running so fast or furiously as when last I had seen them. The horse, as he approached me, I could see was laboring hard, yet he kept gamely to his task, and Nob's too. The splendid fellow was driving the quarry straight toward me. I crouched behind my bush and laid my noose in readiness to throw. As the two approached my hiding place, Nob's reduced his speed, and the stallion evidently only too glad of the respite dropped into a trot. It was at this gate that he passed me. My rope-hand flew forward, the Honda well down, held the noose open, and the beautiful bay fairly ran his head into it. Instantly he wheeled to dash off at right angles. I braced myself with the rope around my hip and brought him to a sudden stand. Rearing and struggling he fought for his liberty, while Nob's panting and with lolling tongue came and threw himself down near me. He seemed to know that his work was done and that he had earned his rest. The stallion was pretty well spent, and after a few minutes of struggling he stood with feet far spread, nostrils dilated and eyes wide, watching me as I edged toward him, taking in the slack of the rope as I advanced. A dozen times he reared and tried to break away, but always I spoke soothingly to him, and after an hour of effort I succeeded in reaching his head and stroking his muzzle. Then I gathered a handful of grass and offered it to him, and always I taught to him in a quiet and reassuring voice. I had expected a battle royal, but on the contrary I found his taming a matter of comparative ease. Though wild he was gentle to a degree, and of such remarkable intelligence that he soon discovered that I had no intention of harming him. After that all was easy.  The following day I fashioned a hackamore from a piece which I cut from the end of my long-gallon rope, and then I mounted him fully prepared for a struggle of titanic proportions in which I was none too sure that he would not come off Victor, but he never made the slightest effort to unseat me, and from then on his education was rapid. No horse ever learned more quickly the meaning of the rain and the pressure of the knees. I think he soon learned to love me, and I know that I loved him, while he and knobs were the best of pals. I called him Ace, I had a friend who was once in the French flying corps, and when Ace let himself out he certainly flew. I cannot explain to you, nor can you understand unless you too are a horseman, the exhilarating feeling of well-being which pervaded me from the moment that I commenced riding Ace. I was a new man, imbued with a sense of superiority that led me to feel that I could go forth and conquer all caspac, single-handed. Now when I needed meat I ran it down on Ace and roped it, and when some great beast with which we could not cope threatened us, we galloped away to safety. But for the most part the creatures we met looked upon us in terror. For Ace and I, in combination, presented a new and unusual beast beyond their experience and can. For five days I rode back and forth across the southern end of the Galoo country without seeing a human being. Yet all the time I was working slowly toward the north, for I had determined to comb the territory thoroughly in search of a drawer. But on the fifth day as I emerged from a forest I saw some distance ahead of me a single small figure pursued by many others. Instantly I recognized the query as Ajor. The entire party was fully a mile away from me, and they were crossing my path at right angles. Ajor a few hundred yards in advance of those who followed her. One of her pursuers was far in advance of the others and was gaining upon her rapidly. With a word and a pressure of the knees I sent Ace leaping out into the open, and with knobs running close alongside we raced toward her. At first none of them saw us, but as we neared Ajor the pack behind the foremost pursuer discovered us and set up such a howl as I never before have heard. They were all galloos, and I soon recognized the foremost as Ducine. He was almost upon Ajor now, and with a sense of terror such as I had never before experienced I saw that he ran with his knife in his hand, and that his intention was to slay rather than capture. I could not understand it, but I could only urge Ace to greater speed, and most nobly did the wondrous creature respond to my demands. If ever a four-footed creature approximated flying it was Ace that day. Ducine, intent upon his brutal design, had his yet not noticed us. He was within a pace of Ajor when Ace and I dashed between them, and I, leaning down to the left, swept my little barbarian into the hollow of an arm and up on the withers of my glorious Ace. We had snatched her from the very clutches of Ducine, who halted, mystified and raging. Ajor too was mystified, as we had come up from diagonally behind her, so that she had no idea that we were nearer until she was swung to Ace's back.  With a little sob she threw her arms about my neck, gasping, My Tom, my Tom! And then Ace sank suddenly into thick mud to his belly, and Ajor and I were thrown far over his head. He had run into one of those numerous springs which covercast back. Sometimes they are little lakes, again but tiny pools, and often more quagmires of mud, as was this one overgrown with lush grasses which effectively hid its treacherous identity. It is a wonder that Ace did not break a leg so fast he was going when he fell, but he didn't, though with four good legs he was unable to wallow from the mire. Ajor and I had sprawled face down in the covering grasses, and so had not sunk deeply, but when we tried to rise we found that there was not footing, and presently we saw that Duceen and his followers were coming down upon us. There was no escape. It was evident that we were doomed. Slay me, big dayjor.  He is sworn to kill me.  Today they searched for me and found me, and as I fled Duceen ran after me crying that he would slay me.  I couldn't kill her, not at least until the last moment, and I told her so, and that I loved her, and that until death came I would live and fight for her. knobs had followed us into the bog and had done fairly well at first, but when he neared us he too sank to his belly and could only flounder about. We were in this predicament when Duceen and his followers approached the edge of the horrible swamp. I saw that Altan was with him and many other Krohlu warriors. The alliance against Jor the chief had therefore been consummated, and this horde was already marching upon the Galoo city. I sighed as I thought how close I had been to saving not only a Jor, but her father and his people from defeat and death. Beyond the swamp was a dense wood. Could we have reached this we would have been safe, but it might as well have been a hundred miles away as a hundred yards across that hidden lake of sticky mud. Upon the edge of the swamp Duceen and his horde halted to revile us. They could not reach us with their hands, but I had a command from Duceen they fitted arrows to their bows, and I saw that the end had come. A Jor huddled close to me and I took her in my arms. I love you, Tom, she said. Only you. Tears came to my eyes then, not tears of self-pity for my predicament, but tears from a heart filled with a great love, a heart that sees the sun of its life and its love setting even as it rises. The renegade Galoos and their Kroloo allies stood waiting for the word from Duceen that would launch that barbed avalanche of death upon us. When they're broke from the wood beyond the swamp the sweetest music that ever fell upon the ears of man, the sharp staccato of at least two-score rifles fired rapidly at will. Down went the Galoo and Kroloo warriors like ten pins before that deadly fusillade. What could it mean? To me it meant but one thing, and that was that Hollis, in short, and the others had scaled the cliffs and made their way north to the Galoo country upon the opposite side of the island in time to save a Jor and me from almost certain death. I didn't have to have an introduction to them to know that the men who held those rifles were the men of my own party, and when a few minutes later they came forth from their concealment my eyes verified my hopes. There they were, every man jack of them, and with them were a thousand straight sleek warriors of the Galoo race, and ahead of the others came two men in the garb of Galoos. Each was tall and straight and wonderfully muscled, yet they differed as ace might differ from a perfect specimen of another species. As they approached the mire, a Jor held forth her arms and cried, Jor, my chief, my father, and the elder of the two rushed in knee-deep to rescue her, and then the other came close and looked into my face, and his eyes went wide and mine too, and I cried, Boan, for heaven's sake, Boan Tyler, it was he. My search was ended. Around me were all my company and the man we had searched a new world to find. They cut saplings from the forest and later rode into the swamp before they could get us all out, and then we marched back to the city of Jor, the Galoo chief, and there was great rejoicing when A. Jor came home again, mounted upon the glossy back of the stallion ace. Tyler and Hollis and Short and all the rest of us Americans nearly worked our jaws loose on the march back to the village, and for days afterward we kept it up. They told me how they had crossed the barrier cliffs in five days, working twenty-four hours a day and three eight-hour shifts, with two reliefs to each shift alternating half-hourly. Two men, with electric drills driven from the dynamoes aboard the toreador, drilled two holes four feet apart in the face of the cliff and in the same horizontal planes. The holes slanted slightly downward. Into these holes the iron rods brought as a part of our equipment, and for just this purpose, were inserted, extending about a foot beyond the face of the rock. Across these two rods a plank was laid, and then the next shift, mounting to the new level, bored two more holes five feet above the new platform, and so on. During the nights the searchlights from the toreador were kept playing upon the cliff at the point where the drills were working, and at the rate of ten feet an hour the summit was reached upon the fifth day. Ropes were lowered, blocks lashed to trees at the top, and crude elevators rigged, so that by the night of the fifth day the entire party, with the exception of the few men needed to man the toreador, were within caspac, with an abundance of arms, ammunition, and equipment. From then on they fought their way north in search of me, after a vain and perilous effort to enter the hideous reptile infested country to the south. Owing to the number of guns among them they had not lost a man, but their path was strewn with the dead creatures they had been forced to slay to win their way to the north end of the island, where they had found Bowen and his bride among the gallows of Jor. The reunion between Bowen and Knobbs was marked by a frantic display upon Knobbs' part, which almost stripped Bowen of the scanty attire that the gallow custom had about-saved him. When we arrived at the gallow city, Lys Larue was waiting to welcome us. She was Mrs. Tyler now, as the master of the toreador had married them the very day that the search-party had found them, though neither Lys nor Bowen would admit that any civil or religious ceremony could have rendered more sacred the bonds with which God had united them. Neither Bowen nor the party from the toreador had seen any sign of Bradley and his party. They had been so long lost now that any hopes for them must be definitely abandoned. The gallows had heard rumors of them, as had the western Krolu and Bandlu, but none had seen ought of them since they had left Fort Dinosaur months since. We rested in Jor's village for a fortnight, while we prepared for the southward journey to the point where the toreador was to lie offshore in wait for us. During these two weeks Chalaz came up from the Krolu country, now a full-fledged gallow. He told us that the remnants of Altan's party had been slain when they attempted to re-enter Krolu. Chalaz had been made chief, and when he rose had left the tribe under a new leader whom all respected. Nob stuck close to Bowen, but Ace and Jor and I went out upon many long rides through the beautiful north gallow country. Chalaz had brought my arms and ammunition up from Krolu with him, but my clothes were gone, nor did I miss them once I became accustomed to the free attire of the gallow. At last came the time for our departure. Upon the following morning we were to set out toward the south and the toreador and dear old California. I had asked Ace Jor to go with us, but Jor, her father, had refused to listen to the suggestion. No pleas could swerve him from his decision. Ace Jor, the Cassattolo, from whom might spring a new and greater Caspacian race, could not be spared. I might have any other she among the gallows, but Ace Jor, no. The poor child was heartbroken, and as for me I was slowly realizing the hold that Ace Jor had upon my heart and wondered how I should get along without her. As I held her in my arms that last night I tried to imagine what life would be like without her.  Morning came more quickly than I could have wished. I rose and breakfasted, but saw nothing of Ace Jor. It was best, I thought, that I go thus without the harrowing pangs of a last farewell. The party formed for the march, and escorted gallow warriors ready to accompany us. I could not even bear to go to Ace's corral and bid him farewell. The night before I had given him to Ace Jor, and now in my mind the two seemed inseparable. And so we marched away, down the street flanked with its stone houses, and out through the wide gateway in the stone wall which surrounds the city, and on across the clearing toward the forest through which we must pass to reach the northern boundary of Gallo, beyond which we would turn south. At the edge of the forest I cast a backward glance at the city which held my heart, and beside the massive gateway I saw that which brought me to a sudden halt. It was a little figure leaning against one of the great upright posts upon which the gates swing. A crumpled little figure, and even at this distance I could see its shoulders heave to the sobs that racked it. It was the last straw. Bowen was near me. Good-bye, old man, I said. I'm going back. He looked at me in surprise. Good-bye, old man, he said, and grasped my hand. I thought you'd do it in the end. And then I went back, and took Ace Jor in my arms, and kissed the tears from her eyes, and a smile to her lips, while together we watched the last of the Americans disappear into the forest. End of Chapter 7. End of the People That Time Forgot


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Monday. And we're back. We're back talking about doing our news roundup. So we'll be back. I should put on the video. There I am. Thanks everybody for joining me. These are daily shows that I do while I'm in town. We'll do one every day this week. And we'll go from there. We'll see what happens when I'm on the road. But so for this week and then Monday and Tuesday next week, we'll have these news roundups. As you know, we count on Super Chat partially to fund this show. And the goal for the Super Chats for the news roundup is $250. Get some questions ready. Or get support ready. And you can use the Super Chat to support the show. All right. Let's jump right in. I thought I'd start quickly before we get to the topic I listed with a story out of Russia. I want to give you just a quick sense of the kind of regime that people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Taka Cawson and many, many, many people on the right. And many as well within the, I guess, the libertarian movement are supporting. Who are these people that so many people in the U.S. seem to be, seem to be in support? Well, Vladimir Moza, who has been a journalist but is an opposition activist in Russia, was just sentenced to 25 years in jail in a strict regime correctional colony. Sounds like Siberia to me. 25 years. What is the sin of Vladimir? The sin is that he criticized the war in Ukraine. He supposedly was spreading false information about the Russian army and was affiliated with quote, undesirable organizations. And this is for this. A former journalist and politician and an opponent of Putin, a critic of Putin for many, many years. He got sent to 25 years and what looks like hard labor because he criticized because he is a dissenter because he criticized the Kremlin. This, again, is the regime being that much of the right is now actively, actively supporting. This is the statement that Vladimir Moza put out last week, knowing he was going to be sentenced. He quote every word that I've said, not only do I not repent any of this, I am proud of it. Pretty powerful stuff, pretty powerful stuff. He says, I know that the day will come when the darkness engulfed my country will clear our society will open its eyes and shutter when it realizes what crimes are committed in its name. The sentence, the court lasted just a few minutes. It took the judge just a few minutes, just like in the old Soviet show trials. A little bit of evidence that the state makes its claim and the judge rules and convicts and sentences all went very efficient and sent out. So pretty, pretty horrible, but they have it. This is what he's done to political opponents of Vladimir Putin. All right, let's jump in, talk about JK Wallens. So as you as you probably know, JK Wallens attempt to be made over the last few years to cancel JK Wallens because of things she said about transgender. You know, there are places in our culture, there are places in Hollywood, there are places among, among I'd say the cultural elites where JK Wallens name is unmentionable. He, she whose name should not be mentioned. If you remember that's how that was Voldemort, he who's who should not be mentioned Voldemort or she was treated. She got the Voldemort treatment and any affiliation with her was dramatically criticized. So it came as a little bit of a surprise when the new, I guess times one streaming service called Max, which includes HBO and a bunch of other stuff announced. I guess over the weekend or late last week that they had just signed a deal to bring Harry Potter to the network and to do a decades long deal where I guess every season will be a book. So they will they will do a long form treatment of Harry Potter, not just not just, you know, the movie treatment but actually do a TV series. A lot of money is going to be put into this. It's a lot of talent is going to be poured into this. This is Max, which is the new name of the streaming service, which includes I said, as I said HBO, this is going to be their flagship. And this is going to be a big deal. Now I for one, as a fan of Harry Potter's original books, I'm looking forward to this. This will be fun. It'll be a fun series. It'll be a fun show. I'm sure it will be well done. HBO, as we know, has a record of producing really amazing TV shows. And with today's special effects and everything else, this will be a lot of fun. This will be this will be great visually. And the story, of course, is is fun. It's really good. But what was surprising to people is not that they are doing this was surprising to people that J.K. Rowland was actually listed as an executive producer on the show. And many people out there in the Internet is going nuts around this. Many people out there are shocked, dismayed, upset. How could this woman be allowed to be an executive director? She is banned. She is she is canceled. And and there's a lot of a lot of stuff, you know, on Twitter, on social media in in kind of among the cultural elites in terms of how dare how dare she she make this she make this statement. So it's good to see J.K. Rowland's being uncanceled. But I thought I take the opportunity of this to actually go back and look at what did J.K. Rowland actually say? How did she upset people so much? What did she actually say to get herself canceled in the first place? So I found an article called a complete breakdown of J.K. Rowland's transgender comments controversy in Glamour magazine, which is very much very much a, you know, anti J.K. Rowland's and very much seem to support her cancellation.  Unfortunately, they're not really presenting this in a format once and let me just switch formats because the format is not doesn't make it easy for me. So I thought I'd read you some of the tweets that got J.K. Rowland's into deep water and canceled and being called a a transphobe and anti trans and everything else. And so let's see if we can find this stuff. God, why is it making it so difficult? It wasn't difficult a minute ago. All right, we'll get there. All right, we'll get there as this page loads very, very slowly. It's like it's really it's like it's like it's as if this website does not want me, does not want me to actually have access to this to this story. Okay, so let's let's give it a let's give it a little bit. Anyway, yeah, I mean, time one is standing by J.K. Rowland's they they they are not withdrawing they've been challenged they've said oh no no we've had a productive amazing relationship with J.K. Rowland's for for a very long time we have no intention of moving away from this relationship and we expect to continue to work with J.K. Rowland's and she's definitely part of this program. All right, so what did she say this is a tweet from June 6 2020 part of and she's commenting on an article that basically says Look, well, I mean, an article that refers to non trans women, regular women, women as people who menstruate. So J.K. Rowland's wrote in quotes people who menstruate. I'm sure they used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Woman woman woman that got in deep trouble.  And but you can't do that because women include now the concept of women supposedly has to include trans women and trans women don't menstruate so you can have a concept. So what is she standing up for? She's standing up for a traditional a traditional a science based traditional definition of women and rejecting the idea that we need some extra concept like to define original women as she got cancer because of this stuff. There's another one. This is J.K. Rowland's and look, J.K. Rowland's just to be clear, J.K. Rowland's a leftist. She's certainly left of center on economic issues. She's she's left to send on pretty almost all social issues. She's considered a radical feminist. She is, you know, on almost every cultural issue, she's on the left. But she's a darling of the conservatives over trans stuff. This is what you wrote.  If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth. That's pretty good. You have to admit that's pretty good.  And she's doing it from the perspective also of a lesbian, somebody who has same sex attraction. Well, what does same sex attraction mean if there's no such thing as sex?  She continued that tweet by saying the idea that women like me, who've been emphatic to trans people for decades and sorry, emphatic. God, I can't read sometimes. The idea that women like me, who've been emphatic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they're vulnerable in the same way as women, i.e. to male violence, quote, hate trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences is nonsense. Again, absolutely true. Just true. She's just saying there's such a thing as sex. A trans woman is not a woman. She can be a trans woman she wants. Don't have a problem with that. But she's not a woman. Different experience, different biology, different reality. And she continues. I respect every trans person's right to live any way they feel authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life is being shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so.  This is just what I'm saying. My super chat just crashed on me trying to get it back rolling. Let's see if it'll work. Yeah, I think that works. She continues. Well, no, she continues the different tweet this one. But again, from 2020, I've never felt a shouted down, ignored and targeted as a lesbian within our supposed GLBT community as I have over the past couple of years. That is her comments on trans, what has really made her feel shouted down canceled. This is what Andrew James Carter wrote, I guess he's a trans activist. Since J.K. Rollins has blocked any reply to this litany of half truths and transphobic dog whistles, I thought I'd catalogued them properly here and then he goes on with all this but transphobic dog whistles, transphobic, what was transphobic about what she wrote. There's just, Paris Lee says, there's just no evidence that me being me is causing problems for any other woman. If there are any problems and you know, just, there's no point. I wanted to, I wanted to read you the stuff from J.K. Rollins, not so much from all of these. And of course, I don't know if you know, but Radcliffe and Emma Thompson, Watson, and a bunch of people affiliated with, with, you know, with a bunch of people affiliated with the heavy pot of, the heavy pot of stuff. I've ranted against J.K. Rollins, J.K. Rollins. In July 5th, 2020, J.K. Rollins again on Twitter, I've ignored fake tweets attributing to me. Oh God, what is going on? I've ignored fake tweets attributing to me. And R. Ted Widely, I've ignored porn, tweeted to children on a tweet about their art. I've ignored death and rape threats. I'm not going to ignore this. And she goes, when you lie about what I believe about mental health medication and when you misrepresent the views of a trans woman for whom I feel nothing but admiration and solidarity, you cross the line. She's defending here a friend of hers who's trans. Many health professionals are concerned about young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery, when this may not be in their best interest. Many, myself included, believe we are watching a new kind of conversion therapy for young gay people who are being set on a lifelong path of medication that may result in the loss of their fertility and or for sexual function. As I've said many times, transition may be the answer for some. For others, it won't witness the accounts of detransitioners. The system sees surgery as the easy fix to girls who do not conform. And, you know, she goes on, I actually found there's an essay. I think I did a show about this a while back. There's an essay that J.K. Rollins wrote about the whole trans phenomena, the whole trans issue. I thought the essay was quite good. I encourage you to look it up. I encourage you to look at her tweets. I think she's actually one of the more thoughtful people writing about the trans issue out there. And again, all of that thoughtful writing has managed to get her cancelled, but it's good to see her being uncanceled and back. And I look forward to watching Harry Potter on Max when it comes out, probably in a year or two. That'll be a lot of fun. All right, some quick news items and then we'll call it a day. Remind people that you can't ask me questions and that we do have a fundraising kind of a support goal of $250. Others were way behind on that. So please consider using the chat. We've only got 52 watching live. Not sure what's happened. Maybe people have gotten out of the habit of the Iran book show during the news roundups on a regular basis.  And you can do that by giving stickers, which do not involve asking a question. All right, I've talked about the Fox domain lawsuit a number of times. It's a lawsuit I was looking forward to. I think a lot of interesting stuff is going to come out of it. It has significant implications to what is considered defamation and what is considered speech and the world of the media. And to what extent can the media lie and get away with it? And to what extent is clamping down on the media violation of their First Amendment rights? So it's an interesting topic. It's an interesting issue. And I think there's going to be a lot of discussion around it for years to come, depending on how it all pans out. But if, and this is the big if, it ever goes to court, because today's court proceedings, which was supposed to start this morning, were delayed. And there are significant rumors flying that Fox is talking to Dominion about settling the case. I think Fox has a huge incentive to settle this. A lot of stuff is going to come out revealing the lies and the misrepresentation that Fox engaged with during the post-election 2020 and early 2021. I think that is going to make Fox look even worse than they already look. And that Fox has every incentive to settle this. Dominion, it's a $1.6 billion lawsuit, but that's kind of a joke number.  If Dominion can collect a few hundred millions off of this, they will be super happy. And they will all become gazillionaires as a consequence of this. The owners of Dominion will do very, very, very well for themselves with a hundreds of millions of dollar legal settlement. And I can't believe there will be less than a few hundred millions of dollars. So don't be surprised if tomorrow either the lawsuit is canceled or it's delayed again as these negotiations continue. But the reality is that it's very likely that Fox and Dominion will actually settle. And we will never actually get to hear some of these Fox people understand trying to justify and explain all their lies and all their misrepresentations. Too bad. I was looking forward to. All right, I wanted to give you a quick update on Iran, not a positive update at all. So Iran, the Iranian regime has announced that it will start prosecuting women who remove their head scoffs. They will start imposing fines and they're going to use, instead of using kind of the morality police to do this, the morality police who killed the woman who started all the protests and everything, they're actually going to use the surveillance state to do this. They're going to use the installed cameras in public spaces, the cameras on highways to catch violators of their dress code and to find them and in some cases to arrest them. Police have sent thousands of messages to businesses and car owners, warning them to comply. Women have to be covered up even when they're in a car. So this is why car owners is important. Iran's police chief announced last week that cameras would be installed. More cameras are going to be installed in order to facilitate all this.  Maybe that's a way to get around this. The country's deputy attorney general warned on Saturday the prosecutors would charge those urge women to take off the veil as well. So all the activists, the pro women activists are going to be published as well. They also said the punishment for the crime of promoting and encouraging others to remove the hijab is much heavier than the crime of removing the hijab itself. So this is targeted of course at the leaders and at the women and men who are urging a change to Iranian society. All of these offenses will be dealt in criminal court whose decisions are final. There's generally a crackdown being imposed on women who floated the law and we will see how the Iranians rally around this. We'll see what the response is going to be. It's truly sad to see that change didn't happen. But as I told you at the time, it's very, very difficult without having some inside a force, some element inside the regime who supports the protesters to actually see regime change. You have to have the military or the police force or somebody with weapons in support of this to be able to actually get it done. So we will see, we will see. Earlier this month, I don't know if you saw this video, but there was a video out of a man dumping yogurt on the head of a mother and daughter who didn't have, who weren't covering the hair, didn't have a veil.  In the footage, you see the shop owner and another man chasing this guy outside, so going out and defending the women, right? Now, such actions could be perceived as promoting, eliminating a job and those men who chased out the ones who committed the violent act of pouring yogurt on them, now those men could be charged under the new law. So, not a good situation, not a good situation at all for women in Iran, not a good situation at all for liberty and freedom in Iran. You know, to some extent, I guess I'm not surprised, to a large extent, this is a consequence of the fact that they got very little support from the West. They got very little moral support, they got very little political support. The Biden administration is actively negotiating another nuclear deal behind everybody's back. The Saudis are now all chummy with the Iranians, the Chinese have entered into this. So basically Iran and Iran is much closer to Russia now than it ever has been. Iran feels protected, it feels that, you know, why appease these protesters? Nobody around the world seems to care and we're writing high, relatively speaking, everybody's coming to our doorstep. So this is the consequence of geopolitics in addition to everything else. All right. Oh, finally, yes, I wanted to talk about artificial intelligence. Just a few quick stories about artificial intelligence. As I said, this is going to be a regular feature in the Iran book show just because there's so much to talk about in this. Let's start with the fact that it's just a little bit of history for those of you who don't know. I think I talked about this when I talked about chip wars, but in 1957, a long time ago, Silicon Valley basically got started when eight scientists who were part of Shockley Semiconductor left to form Fairchild Semiconductor, eight scientists. Soon after those scientists landed up leaving Fairchild and from those scientists we got Intel, advanced AMD, Kleiner-Pokens, Sequoia and many, many, many, many other companies. Basically, those eight scientists you could easily say founded Silicon Valley, both some of the major corporations that landed up being Silicon Valley and really two of the most important venture capital firms in the history of Silicon Valley, Sequoia and Kleiner-Pokens. Recently, and I don't know if this parallel holds or not, but I thought it was cute. Recently, seven of the eight scientists who wrote a key paper about large language, what's the M stand for? Something, right? I had this. It slipped my mind. Anyway, the AI basically. Key paper have left Google. They've raised now, these scientists have raised over $1.7 billion for five different startups. Models, thank you Miroslav. So large language models, which is basically the chat GPT kind of stuff. So this was a paper they wrote a few years ago that really was a key paper describing these large language models and was a big move forward in the field. Again, these scientists who've left Google have now started five different startups, $1.7 billion raised. This gives you a little bit of indication of kind of how AI, we're just seeing like the tip of a giant iceberg. Maybe the coolest tip, maybe the tip that is going to get the most press, but AI is getting massive amounts of funding. I think some of the smartest people in the world are going into AI. There are dozens of new companies being founded to apply to create new models of AI and to apply it to every area in life. And indeed Sundar Pichai, who is the Google CEO, Alphabet Google CEO, was interviewed in 60 minutes this last weekend on Sunday. And what he says is interesting and fascinating and absolutely true and we'll be talking about here in the show. He basically says this is going to impact every product across every company. He gives this example, an example I've given as well. For example, you could be a radiologist. If you think about five to ten years from now, you're going to have an AI collaborator with you. You come in the morning, let's say you have a hundred things to go through. It may say, the AI may say to you, these are the most serious cases you need to look at first. And it might, and this is me adding, and it might give you some indications on what that is going to be, what you're looking for in each one of those so that you have the final word, but it has done most of the work overnight. This is maybe one of the most transformative technologies ever, and I really think that. And I think we are living through it and it's going to be really, it's the fun of living through a period like this, the fun of being part of something historic and something meaningful like this, and being able to experience the change that's going to happen. Maybe try to figure out how to profit from that change. Maybe try to figure out what that change means to our lives and what it means to society at large. And this is why I'm going to devote a regular feature to this. I mean, this is going to be something we keep talking about. You know, it's going to be very fast and it's going to be very dramatic. And I think people are afraid, they're not completely rational to be afraid because the world is going to change and people who fear change, people who don't know how to adjust to change, people who are worried about their jobs or people who are worried about how this all evolves, you know, should feel, should feel, should worry, should worry. And people are going to have to think clearly there are going to have to be some ethical standards being applied to this and it's going to be interesting to see how those come about. It will be interesting also to see whether these technologies are thought of by fear, by fear that is promoted within our culture. Okay, final point on AI, which I find interesting, just a few years ago, just a few months ago, there was panic throughout, there was panic among lots of people that I know, but primarily people on the right, people on the left, but generally panic among people within technology, but a lot of people who do politics, that Google had a monopoly of a search and Google was a monopoly company and Google needed to be broken up and Google needed to be regulated and Google needed to be controlled and Google was politically biased and Google, Google, Google, Google, Google, but Google was a problem. I remember a fence house where he showed me a documentary that placed Google as this evil corporation destroying the fabric of our society and that we needed to use antitrust to try to reign Google in. Well, Google is panicking right now because the reality is that Microsoft Bing has integrated chat GPT into its search function and is really, for the first time in a long time, threatening Google's dominance of search. Google search business is under threat and this is just Bing. We don't know what some of these startups are creating. We don't know what some of these new, call them smart apps that are going to use AI to do specific searches for you as an individual. We don't know where those apps, where that technology, where those new companies are going to lead us, but we do know that right now Microsoft is a real threat to Google. Google indeed is racing right now, investing heavily in trying to build a completely new search engine, redoing Google search to integrate with its own AI module called BARD, which is supposedly as good as chat GPT, maybe even better. So there was a real effort now at Google to try to realizing that search is never going to be the same. Search in five years is going to be very different than search is today. And iPhone think that's super exciting and looking forward to the changes and looking forward to what we get. But there are a lot of people out there who worry about this, who are scared by this, and that includes Google. And I wonder what this says about all those, what do you call it, scare mongers, politicians, activists who wanted to break up Google and claim that capitalism always creates monopolies. Always creates monopolies, we're told. Here's another example. Google suppose he was a monopoly, no more, no more. All right, let's see. Finally, just a quick note in terms of the throttling of the technology, just a story about European Union lawmakers want to give regulators new powers to govern the development of technologies like those behind chat GPT. That's what we need. We need governments involved. The new act that they want to pass say that they're committed to adding provisions to the bill aimed at steering the development of very powerful and official intelligence in a direction that's human centric, safe and trustworthy. Now, I do think there will have to be legislation around AI. There's going to open up all kinds of legal cans of worms, if you will. But do I trust any politician of life today to do a good job at passing that kind of laws? Unfortunately, no. So it's going to be very, this is the thing, it's going to be a very difficult period the next decade because we've got this revolutionary technology, true revolutionary technology that is going to change the world. Politicians who don't have the intelligence to understand it, don't have the intelligence to know the implications of it. We have politicians who are tribal, not interested in truth, not interested in science, not interested in reality, and they're going to have to deal with this. Anatomy is a scary part of AI. AI doesn't scare me. It's our political establishment's response to it that really, really, really scares me. Okay, those are the stories that I have. Let's take a look, let's take a look quickly. We're about $100 short of our goal. So we've got 60 people watching, so a couple of bucks from everybody as a sticker would get us where we need to be. Wes says, while irrational cancellation is real, J.K. Rollins continued success. She showed people that outrage and social media does not necessarily translate to the real world. I think that's right, and I think the fact that she's getting this big contract and she's going to be involved in it shows that there's a limit to how much companies are willing to actually go along this canceling politically correct path, particularly when big bucks are involved. You know, the way to deal with cancellation is to stand up to it. The way to deal with cancellation is not new laws, not new bans, not getting the government involved. The way to do it is for those of us who don't believe in this political correct nonsense, this woke stuff, is to just stand up and say, we're not going to succumb to it. We're going to keep dealing with J.K. Rollins. We're going to keep dealing with whoever is being canceled tomorrow. That's the best only legitimate way really at the end of the day to deal with the canceling. Everybody has a right to cancel you. You have a right to be canceled. You have a right to cancel other people, and you have a right to defend yourself. So stand up, grow a backbone. J.K. Rollins has a backbone. Now she also has billions in the bank. It's easier to have a backbone when you have billions in the bank. But we've all got to develop backbones and stand up for what is right and defend the truth and refuse to cave to barbarians on the left and barbarians on the right, to barbarians broadly speaking, to people who don't want to hear or want to silence our speech. Thank you, Wes. Really appreciate the $50. Got us a lot closer to our goal. We're now under $100 to go. So yes, $2 from everybody right now would get us there. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Linda. Stephen, five. Linda, two. That's how we chip away at this. Remo, first-time super chatter. So thank you, Remo. Really appreciate it. This is in euros. Let's see. Carl Icahn is one of my heroes in finance. But most of his takeovers in the 80s did not succeed. But he still made a lot of money due to green mailing. What is the economic benefit of failed takeovers due to green mailing? God, this is like a question from my past. I'm going to have to resurrect my knowledge of it. So in a sense, the green mailing is a way in which, so green mailing is, let's say your Carl Icahn, you take a large position in a company. Now, according to U.S. regulation, you notice that green mailing would not be possible in lezovic capitalism. There is no green mailing in lezovic capitalism. It's insignificant. Because one of the problems with hostile takeovers in the United States in the 1980s is you took a position, let's say 10, 15% of a company, and then you have to make an announcement. After 10%, you have to make an announcement. This is my intent, and you have to make an actual offer to buy the rest of the shares of the company. In a true lezovic capitalist economy, you would just continue buying the shares until you owned 51% of the company. You'd walk into the CEO's office and fire them. That's how it used to be before security regulations that was passed in 1968. But in order to protect managers who did not want to be fired by people like Carl Icahn, this process of having to bid for the shares and making it public and giving everybody a chance to participate was initiated. So what happened with some of Carl Icahn's bids is he let the world know that he had bought a company, let's say, was selling at $10. He bought 15% of the $10. And then the company would turn around and say, we'll buy those shares from you for 15 or 20 or whatever. Just go away. Don't take us over. And I would say that it's not the ideal outcome. The ideal outcome from a market perspective is for Carl Icahn to take the company over, break it up, make it more efficient, reallocate the capital, and so on. But this is not an awful outcome. Because what are these companies that Carl Icahn did it to? These are companies that were inefficient, unproductive, where capital was being wasted and where managers were not doing the right thing by shareholders. It was often bloated conglomerates. The green mailing actually provided Carl Icahn with more capital. And by doing so, it allowed him then to continue pursuing bad companies and reforming them and making them better. It also let the market know that these companies were problematic companies. That there was real opportunity here for restructuring. And there was real opportunity here to go in and change these companies and improve these companies and raise their stock value. And often companies that Carl Icahn failed to purchase, other people purchased later on. Or these companies restructured themselves, realized that Icahn had done something real, that it was true that they were problematic, and they basically restructured themselves. Icahn made money, the company got restructured, managers I get kept their job, but at a more intense rate because now they were running, they had to prove that the company was efficient and productive. So green mailings served a productive function. By getting capital away from people who were wasting it. And by signaling to other investors that this company could do better. That there were people out there who knew that you could buy this company who was trading a 10 for 15 and still make money on it. So its real potential was maybe 20. So we more hopefully that answers your question. I could do a whole series of talks on hostile takeovers. The 80s were an amazing time. And the hostile takeovers are an amazing pro-capitalist, pro-freedom, pro-economic efficiency and economic progress thing. I agree with you with regard to Carl Icahn. He is one of my heroes as well in finance. And I admire Carl Icahn particularly right now because I learned that he shorted a GameStop at its peak and still held the short until recently. So Carl Icahn kind of made money as the meme stock phenomena imploded. And I can't think of anybody more deserving than Carl Icahn to make money off of that. I wish I had made Mr. Money off of that. But good for him. By having the knowledge and the guts and the know-how to go into that market, short that stock and make a fortune as the stock went down closer to what it's actually worth. Thank you, Remo. And I always love answering questions about areas like that in finance, which I really like. Catherine says, hey, Iranimos, let's get this thing rolling. That was earlier on. We're $83 short. So two bucks again from everybody who hasn't given any would get us to where we need to be pretty quickly. Five bucks would require only two thirds of you to participate and we would get there pretty quickly. So please consider supporting this show and getting us to our goal so we can continue doing these news roundups. I mean, at the end of the day, if there's not a lot of support for news roundups, we won't do them. We'll do something else. Combine AI with genetic developments like mRNA and possibilities for humans can be remarkable. Absolutely. And it's not just mRNA. I think the big development on the biofront is gene splicing. It's CRISPR.  So biotech as a whole and AI used to make biotech more efficient and more productive and more possible. Wow.  And this is all happening at the same time as this disastrous philosophical and political collapse that is happening all around us. And yeah, I mean, it's just bewildering to me this disconnect between the state of technology and the state of, I don't know, philosophy, the state of thinking, the state of ideas in the culture. It's sad. I did read a story this morning about a drug combined with mRNA technology. mRNA, in a sense, is used to deliver this drug, having amazing success at this combination at reducing mortality and repeats of a deadly skin cancer. So this is, I think it was a 44% increase in the efficiency of using the drug without the mRNA. mRNA is a life changing technology and all these idiots, sorry, all these people out there who are, you know, who are obsessed with, oh my God, mRNA is dangerous, are going to be missing out on one of the innovations that is going to be responsive from increasing, for benefiting humanity, maybe more than any other, in terms of new drugs, drug delivery, drug efficiency and delivery of drugs, you know, to where they're most needed and, you know, in real cures for certain types of cancer and new ways in which to change our biology in ways that allow us to live longer, super, super excited for the next 20, 30 years in biotech and in AI. Jimbo is going to buy a biotech ETF. Yeah, I mean, absolutely, absolutely.  Thank you, Catherine. Yeah, we're going to be, it looks like we're going to be short because I only have two questions left and we're $83 short. All right. Oops, I didn't mean to do that. Frank asks, did you ever see this Sweden S tank, strange design? I don't think I have. I'll look it up. I don't think I've seen the Sweden. Okay, last question. So if anybody wants to ask a question, how's the time to jump in? If anybody wants to support the show, now's the time to jump in. Why does pessimism sell so well? It seems, it seems, God, it seems so many readily buy into crisis, climate, population, etc., propaganda. Is it because religion, especially the religious, the original sin aspect is still so influential? I think a lot of it is original sin. I think a lot of it is this idea that things cannot be good when we don't deserve goodness. We don't deserve a good life. I think broadly it's a lack of a positive philosophy, a lack of a positive philosophy for life. Wes, thank you. Wes just pushed us over a goal. So really, really appreciate that. It's a lack of a positive view of the world, a positive view of life. And you know, these people are always, always thinking about what's the next disaster? What's the next bad thing to happen? Well, they're easily, I think a lot of them are easily caught up in kind of millennial cultish type stuff where, yeah, the next disaster at the end of humanity. You know, if you don't have, if you don't have positive goals, if you don't have positive, if you don't have positive philosophy by which to live, it's very easy to get caught up in how evil and bad things. And a lot of that comes from altruism, and specifically, I think, Stephen, you're right, from this original sin perspective. Evolutionary biologists claim that it has evolutionary origins, of course, that it's, you know, fight or flight that were programmed to be afraid because that helps us survive. We're programmed to be afraid, but we have reason to evaluate the risks and to evaluate what we should be afraid on what or not, and to be able to calibrate the risks appropriately and to calibrate the dangers appropriately and not, you know, fly into flight or flight mode immediately. This is the role of reason. This is the role of reason. So, yes, emotions are there in a sense programmed to help us deal with threats, but much more importantly is our capacity to think it through and to figure it out and to estimate and to evaluate the threats and to decide whether they're real or not and how disastrous they are and to calibrate our fear accordingly. So thank you, Stephen, really good question and good issue to think about. Thanks everybody who did this in under an hour, which is my goal. Thank you Wes again and to all the Super Chat, particularly Wes for getting us over the hump. Remo, thank you for your first time Super Chat. Thank you everybody. Probably no show tonight, but definitely a show tomorrow morning and so two shows tomorrow. I'll take tonight off and then we'll see the rest of the week. If I change my mind about tonight, you'll obviously find out. Thanks everybody and see you all tomorrow morning. I didn't shout out the sticker gang. You mean I did Stephen and Linda. I did Sean, Zach. So thank you to all the Ryan, Stephen, Jonathan, Fendt Hopper, Gale, Ryan, all the people who gave stickers. Thank you all. Really, really appreciate it and to all the Super Chat is appreciated. And if you want to come a month in support of The Iran Book Show, show value for value. You can do so on youranbookshow.com slash support. Patreon, which is a crowd favorite and a subscribe star.


Thank you. Thank you. Hello there. Daniel T. from Buffalo, New York. Jack Jensen, constituent. Good to see you, man. Good to be here. We're all going to go to Chicago next year, I think. Well, we'll be back in Chicago. We won't take this opportunity. Thank Frank Meehan, who's done a great job as our ambassador to Poland. And also Jack Scanlon, who's going to succeed him. His experience in Eastern European affairs in the State Department. The Knowledge of Poland will serve us well. Last week, I nominated Ed Derwinsky here to be the consular to the State Department. And I hope that the people of the Polish-American community, as proud of them as I am, do it, gentlemen, as the qualifications connect to the Polish. Your mailgram is being studied. Realize that Poland remains a top priority of all administration. Beyond that, I will say hi to you. I'm deeply grateful for the support that I continue to have from the Polish-American community. And I know that the time is very limited here. But in a few minutes, I'll stop talking and say maybe somebody has a question I'd like to ask. I just, I may do so. On behalf of the Polish-American community, Polish-American Congress, I want to express our appreciation for the appointment that there was. I think you made a great choice, because that's been in my community for a great, great many years. And he does have the knowledge that's necessary to really work for all Americans. And particularly, Mr. Wien, how has he done a great job? I'm so grateful for him, but you have a good replacement also on a Jack Scanlon. And we feel highly, highly elated that the amount of that caliber will take a little bit of Poland to represent the interest in the United States. And lastly, we certainly are grateful to you for your compassion and your great interest that you have shown to the cause of the people of Poland and your strong position against the Soviet, because as we all understand, the real culprit is the Soviet Union. But then the Poles are recipients of all that's bad that's coming out at the present time. So our melee plan, as well as the memorandum we have submitted, more or less summarizes our interests, our concern and support of the work that the Jewelman done and you can always count on our support. Right. If you had seen the editorial in Chicago Sun-Times over this weekend, praising you for your appointment with Dr. Winsky, you'd think if you wrote it himself. We're going to have a trial praising him very highly because of his background, his experience. And editorial, I said editorial has a great, great appointment that it was. We'll set your topic. Well, now I've got to be grateful to you for that, because sometimes it's just not normally fine when you're doing that. That's what I'd like to know about it. The other thing I want to congratulate you on, the statement you made the other day about the meaning of the pipeline in terms of essentially giving the Soviet Union a whole new access of billions of dollars to build up their defenses, I think that statement would be articulated more often. I don't think the world really realizes what you're trying to do there. I want you all to understand, we have continued to negotiate and we're trying to, with our European allies, before we impose those. What we're trying to negotiate is something that we think would be even more effective. So far, we've got one major holdout against it. And what we would be willing to do is lift those sanctions for the existing contracts if we could be successful in getting what we think would be much more stringent in the program involving all of us against Soviet Union. Finally, I want to invite you to Chicago on the 13th of December. I had one of you express the anniversary of our tragic info in Marshall Law. So I'd like to have you in Chicago, but I will put on a real round for it. I don't know what the day did is there is a fair of different kind of personal financing myself for a memorial service for her father there. But I don't know exactly the exact date for that. And the reason that I can't answer you right now is, you know, I keep reading that how powerful this position is supposed to be except that somebody still tells me every day what I'm going to do every 15 minutes of that day. I don't dare say what I'm going to do until I find out what they plan for me. I'm going to be leaning on Jack Berger to go over there. I'm going to give you the Chicago example. Alderman Pujinski has been unusually modest. He's been unusually forceful and supportive. Not just the policies applied to Poland, but more specifically the pipeline sanctions. I would say by and large the Polish-American community is just 1,000% supported. The sanctions recognizing the bigger picture, which is that the Soviet Union is the real culprit, and that's a point which European allies have been able to appreciate as much as but it seems to be appreciated in the Polish-American community very well. I'd just like to consensus on your default. We wholeheartedly support your position of no default. We don't agree with Lane Kirtland that should be defaulted really. I think that every one of us has that understanding and you have really strong support on the part of the Polish-American community. I don't understand their failing to recognize that that ever happens. You've let them off free and all you've done is very seriously hurt the financial structure of our own country. It's like someone's going bankrupt and they don't have any assets that you can claim to at least get back part of your money. So I think we'll be shortly in the cabinet meeting with a discussion of that particular problem. If I could say just overall here, the thing about the Soviet Union also is that we recognize, and this is one of the reasons why so many people see a dichotomy in a grand deal, we recognize that the Soviet Union, economically, is in a very desperate situation. And the grain, this is for cash. And this is a hardship to them to have to come up with this, besides which there's no way that we could keep them from getting what they want as we found out, but there's no one else that will join us in that particular type of embargo. But what we're also doing quite quietly is I've never favored the kind of diplomacy or attempting to get something where you go out and on the front page of the newspaper put the other fellow in a corner in which then politically it's impossible for him to get out of that corner without losing face and prestige in his own constituency. So we have been quietly, what we're trying to do is indicate to the Soviet Union, particularly knowing their economic situation, that actions speak louder than words, that all we're waiting for is to see some actions that indicate that they would really like to join the family of nations and get along, and then be able to do something that reveals to them that there are rewards for that. But all we've heard all these years of dichotomy is words while they go ahead with the great military build up and what they're doing with regard to Poland and all. So I've been trying to get quiet word to them, various sources that do something, do something that would then allow us, without putting in the paper or anything that we're doing, that we could show them what can happen in return for that. I always felt that the Senators were at Senator Jackson back several years ago with regard to Jewish immigration, when he made that a matter of an amendment. In fact, there was no way that they could back down in the eyes of their people, seemingly be dictated to by the Congress of the United States. Now, I happen to know of one president that we had who, any of you remember back in 72 in the Brezhnev visit and the great meetings that all held out so much hope for peace for all of us. But I know at that time, our president took Mr. Brzezinski aside and said, I have a political problem in my country. And all of these things that we're talking about that you would like to see happen, it will be much easier for me if Jewish, the right of Jewish immigration were evident in the Soviet Union. Now, there was nothing in the paper, there was never anything of quid pro quo or anything out there. At the end of the year, 35,000 Jews have been allowed to emigrate. Well, this isn't, I believe in that kind of diplomacy and so I believe that if we continue to pursue that, so far I have to confess, we haven't seen any actions. We haven't been in a response, but we keep on trying to give those legs the opportunity. Mr. President, amongst some emigrant exile leaders in our area, they think that that was a masterful of microphone counting that you made, as it said, those lousy bums. That's really quite nice of you. I really brought up some strange comments. I love to know how you reported that. Well, I had trouble translating the poem. I was wondering about that, but I was going to say, I really didn't have any embarrassment about that. I don't know how you know how it happened. I was doing my radio, my five minute Saturday radio broadcast and I was not aware that I know that the press room, the channel was open to them, so in the press room at the same time I'm doing the broadcast, they can hear it, they're in the press room. I didn't know that they turned the microphone early and that when they asked me to do a voice check, I usually just read a few lines of the script for them to get the voice check, sound check, and so I, the first lines, as you would call, having to do with the Polish leadership was done such and such and so on and so on.  And the whole press room heard it and that's the only thing that was broadcast about them. They might have disturbed the leadership, but the people loved it. The words accepted. I think that that can happen. The Polish people would agree with me. I don't know how to find a way to translate them. It was beautifully translated. I'm very pleased that you are pursuing well. I said in his memo that the character approach also, and I'm pleased that you were saying it quietly. You have to maintain or at least search for some dialogue with all parties involved. I mean, we can do our public pronouncements and we can take our public positions, but the fact of the matter is, as you say, the final answer is going to be found in that five bones. And I think Jack's the answer. The alternative, in my mind, has always been and we mustn't forget this trap. The alternative can get to be the mental feeling that war is inevitable. And I don't think any of us want to see in this day and age that kind of a war. And so I just believe that, and I believe that we've got a better chance while they themselves are as strapped as they are. I'm glad you can grade. It's not for show on TV. You're great. I say, listen, I'm glad I took that. I have to argue that I died. I know that. They're not the most grateful for it. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, sir. All right, thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know if you know that. Can I take a second for a joke? I have become a collector of Russian jokes, of the jokes that the Russian people are telling me, showing their cynicism about their own government, which must be of concern to their government. And this one was Brezhnev, bringing his old mother to see his offices and so forth, and not a comment. And he put her in his limousine and took her to see his apartment in Moscow. There's still no comment. Then he put her in his helicopter and out to his dodger there in the woods outside Moscow, his country home. Finally, in his private jet and down to the Black Sea to that marble palace, he calls his beach cottage. And finally she spoke. And I was playing it. Do the communists know? Thank you very much.


Bowser and Bray and Harper Audio present. Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas. Performed by Dionne Graham. For all the roses growing in concrete, keep blossoming. Part one, germination. When it comes to the streets, there's rules. They ain't written down and you won't find them in a book. It's natural stuff.  Kind of like how you know how to breathe by somebody telling you. If there was a book, though, there would be a whole section on street ball. And the most important rule would be at the top in big, bold letters.   It's OK, Maverick. She calls out from a picnic table. You've got this. Straight up, I ain't got nothing. Me and King got zero points to Dre and Sean's 11. One more point and they win.  Sean getting bomb like he don't exist. Posting them up, shooting jumpers in his face, all that. Got the homies going wild on the sidelines and got King looking like a fool. I can't be mad at King. Now what's going down today? My head not in the game much either. It's one of the perfect August days where the sun real bright yet. It's not too hot to play ball.  Seemed like all the homies came to get a game in. Not the King lords need an excuse to come to Rose. This our territory. We handle business here. Chill out here. Get our bus kicked on the court here. I checked the ball to Dre. He grand extra wide. Come on, man.  Lisa should have played instead of you. Ooh, they go along the sidelines. Dre never go easy on me because I'm his younger cousin.   I say Keisha and Andriana will want to claim you after this one. There go more oohs. Dre's fiance Keisha is over at the picnic table with Lisa laughing. Keisha and Dre's daughter Andriana is in her lap.  Sean says grinning with his gold grill. We should call him Martin Luther King because he got a dream if he think he winning. Dre says, I have a dream. Sean tried to sound like MLK. That one day you may step on this court and get a goddamn point. The homies laugh. Truth is Sean's joke could have been wack and they laugh. That's how it is when you're the crown of the king lords, the Caesar of Rome. People do what they supposed to in order to stay on your good side.  It don't matter that my pops been locked up for nine years or that King's pop been there almost as long. They're still big Don, the former crown. And big Zeke is right hand man. They make me little Don and King little Zeke. Guess we're not old enough to go by our own names yet. Dre bounced the ball. What you got, cuz? You start right. I follow and run straight into Sean's chest. They run in a pick and roll. Dre get away from being King go after and leaving Sean open. Sean gun for the hoop. Dre toss the ball up and goddamn Sean dunk on King. What? Sean yell as he hang from the rim. He jump down and him and Dre do the handshake they've done since they were kids. They can't mess with us.  King slam the ball against the concrete. Shit. He take lose into heart for real. Hey chill. I say, we'll get him next. Y'all gotta be June. Sample complete. Ready to continue?


I'm Thea Paneth from Arlington, Massachusetts. I'm a founding member of a local peace group, Arlington United for Justice with Peace. We formed our group in March of 2002 and we're part of a regional network in Eastern Massachusetts. I also serve on the administrative committee of United for Peace and Justice in National Anti-War Network.  Here's the story. On January 9th, 2006, US soldiers shot at a car that a three-year-old boy named Omar was in with his parents, his brother and another relative. Omar's mother and the relative, I think a woman, died when the car exploded, they must have hit the gas tank. Omar's father was shot four times by soldiers who ordered him not to pull his children from the burning vehicle. He disobeyed the soldiers to save his children and he has permanent medical problems from the bullet injuries. Omar suffered severe burns on one side of his head. He lost his ear and his hands were badly injured. He also lost a thumb, but thankfully the other son, the brother, was not hurt. So a humanitarian aid organization called No More Victims learned of their injuries and arranged for Omar and his father to come to the Boston area for treatment. Veterans for Peace became involved in helping them and through our peace network, my group heard about the situation and we decided to do what we could to help. I guess it was, in a sense, a kind of atonement for the injuries inflicted by our military. It turned out that there were no children for Omar to play with when he was healing from one surgery and waiting for the next round. And I told a friend of mine about the situation and she asked her son, a wonderful, wonderful boy and now a wonderful young man, if he would be okay playing with a child who had been hurt and he said, yes. And a play date was arranged at my house. My child took one look at the injuries and disappeared, she went to her neighbors. So that's the story of how the war on Iraq came to my living room in the presence of such a badly injured child and it's an incredibly painful story to me. We protested by the millions around the world to prevent the war. I got up myself and it was a freezing cold morning in the dark and I made my way to the center of my town on February 15th, 2003. I was a bus captain. We left at 7 a.m. from Town Hall to go to New York. For the world says no to war protest and our millions of voices, our fears, our concerns were dismissed, unheeded by political leaders, by pillars of society, by great institutions, a willful blindness set in, a blindness to the reality of an unconstitutional, illegal, immoral war rooted completely in my eyes. When my group undertook the small humanitarian relief effort as part of our anti-war work, we learned that most people had no idea that children were being injured in the war on Iraq. I wondered then and wonder still, how can that be? Do people really think that bombs are dropped but somehow don't land on people? Does an engineer who designs a missile or a laborer who puts it together ever find out that their work has sheared the legs off a nine-year-old girl who was playing hopscotch? That's the story of another child aided by the group No More Victims. It's a willful blindness and the agony continues to this very moment for the people of Iraq. I think very often of Father Daniel Berrigan's words during the trial of the Catonsville Nine, a trial for burning draft files in 1968 when he said, our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not so help us God do otherwise for we are sick at heart. Our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the land of burning children. I'm grateful to Code Pink for organizing the tribunal. It is clear that we are headed for very rocky times in our country and among our many and great responsibilities in the struggles ahead as to at last, at long last, hold the war criminals accountable for these lands of burning children.