The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday, September 10th. Good news! The show today is not all, but mostly good news, so there you go. I said the other day that I was going to start every show with good news. Well, today we get to talk about good news in quite a bit of the show. So today we're going to do an update on the situation in Ukraine. There's a lot coming out, a lot of news coming out, and a lot of it's kind of fog of war, so it's hard to tell exactly what's going on, but I will give you my best estimate of what is happening on the ground so far. I'm betting pretty good odds on the Ukrainian war, so take it forward it's worth fog of war and everything, but I will be giving you my assessment of where we are, what's going to happen. We can talk about China, we can talk about the EU, we can talk about Biden, we can talk about the consequences of everything that's happening right now on the ground in Ukraine, and of course a lot of people I think right now are watching Moscow pretty carefully. And who knows? Who knows? Who is going to fall out of the window next? Remember Russians falling out of windows? Anyway, if I were Putin I would stay away from the windows. But yes, so we're going to cover what's going on in Ukraine and put it into the context of kind of geopolitics and reflect a little bit about where we had into the future from here. So thank you all for joining me today. It has started raining pretty aggressively outside, so hopefully we don't get that rain in Puerto Rico. Internet goes down phenomena. We will see. I'm looking at the window to assess how much rain is falling, but it looked pretty ominous as the clouds roll in. So let's hope, let's hope the internet holds with us. But anyway, of course the show to a large extent is determined by you guys in terms of what I cover, what I talk about, the themes we go into. You can dictate that through asking questions, making comments on the chat, but primarily on the super chat. You can use the super chat to support the show, to show your support for the Iran book show. Well, not just to show it, to actually do it. And you can also ask lots of questions, which would be really, really cool. Passes, I need a star link and a generator. I have a generator, so electricity is usually not the problem. The generator kicks in pretty quickly, and I have all the equipment on kind of battery power. So even if there's a gap between electricity going up and the generator kicking in, none of the equipment related to the show goes out. The challenge is internet. And I could have a second internet provider here. I'll look into that, that maybe could give me backup and flip from one internet provider to the other in cases of outages. We could try that. But usually when the internet goes out, it goes out for a very short period of time and it's back pretty quickly. I have to figure out whether it's worth the extra investment to put that in. I could put a star link. I would have to put some kind of satellite dish on the roof. I'm not sure whether the building would approve of that. And then of course I have to watch that the satellite dish doesn't get blown away by the next tropical storm or hurricane. So anyway, the challenges of living in Puerto Rico, but living in Puerto Rico, not a bad deal. Not a bad deal. So I shouldn't complain too much. All right, I'll just remind you now, again, the Super Chat is open. We've got Critical Thinker with three questions in. Three questions in. I will answer all of them. And given that on the topic, we'll definitely answer them once I finish my kind of spiel. But you can ask questions. $20 or more get priority, but I do answer all questions unless I run out of time. But nothing, we've got plenty of time today, so I don't expect that to happen. Please like the show before you leave. Really helps with the algorithms. And if you happen to like a particular show a great amount and you think other people would benefit from listening to it, please share. Particularly the short videos, it would be great to see you sharing those more. The more you share, the more exposure we get, the more new people discover the show, the more subscribers we get, the more impact it is out there. So please share the shows, particularly the short videos.  You'd be surprised how these things, you know, somebody you share and somebody else shares and then soon enough the whole world has watched the video and this channel is taking off. The ability of this channel to take off is dependent on you, on you. All right, let's see. What do I want to start? So, we'll start where we should. It really appears that over the last 72 to 96 hours, the Ukrainian military has made dramatic progress in pushing the Russians out of at least the northern part of Ukraine. This is, for many people, this was a surprise because it happened in an area that wasn't expected, but it really does appear that the Ukrainian military is beating the Russians. So the Russians are not fighting that much. What you're seeing is significant retreat by the Russian forces everywhere that the Ukrainians are pushing. It hasn't ended. This is still in the middle. The Ukrainians keep opening up new fronts and I'll open up a map in a little bit and kind of walk you through where I think the action is happening. What is interesting about all of this, a lot of things are interesting about all of this. Really what's interesting about this is the Russians appear to be losing and the Russians appear to know that they are losing. The Russian media is talking about this. Military bloggers on Telegram and other places are discussing this openly. The Russian being defeated by the Ukrainians. The Russian military is not shy about letting the world know that they are evacuating places that they had strong hold on just yesterday. And the Russian appointed governor of Kharkiv, the district of Kharkiv, not the city but the district, has now told everybody, civilians and everybody else to evacuate and that the Russian army can no longer protect them to the extent that there are any civilians there who would like because they collaborated with the Russians to evacuate to Russia. Supposedly there are long, long, long, long lines of cause trying to get into Russia from various parts of eastern Ukraine. So the Russian military is collapsing all over northeast Ukraine and I'll put up a map in a few minutes. This is a massive defeat and I have to say I've been saying this is going to happen for a long time. I never knew the timing. I had no clue what the timing would be. I suspected that the attacks in the south around Gilson were not the end but the beginning and that the attacks in Gilson might have been a diversion. You know when you, and again I'll put up a map with all this, but when you let the whole world know, when you let the enemy know, we're launching an attack on the southern flank and the enemy then reinforces that flank. I was at least a little suspicious about, huh, I wonder if they're using this to divert Russian troops to the south so that they can attack in the east. It's happened. It's exactly what they were doing. Now they're attacking the south is going well as well. We don't have as much information about that. We will see, we will see in the future, but it definitely looks like this was a strategic diversion, a strategic fake out, brilliant military strategy and the Russians are paying the price. I do expect the south to fall as well, Gilson to fall as well in the weeks to come. If not the days to come, we will see. I think generally right now there is panic within the Russian army. Paul says we need a, Iran was right series. Absolutely. You should go back, tag all the videos of me being right and post them on Twitter. Of course, that wouldn't tell you basically tagging all the videos. All right, but before we get to maps, I have to gloat a little bit and I have to gloat as if that's not what I've been doing the last few minutes, but I have to gloat a little bit by showing you a video of as you all know, those of you follow the Iran book show, one of my favorite people in the world. I have to show you this video. It's just from a few, it's from August 29. So what is it? Less than two weeks ago, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is great. This is great. Here we go. This is Tucker Carlson, as you can see. And this is Tucker telling us how the war is going and, and, and what he thinks, what he sees. So we can do hashtag Iran was right or Iran is right always something like that. And we can do Tucker Carlson is wrong as well. So here's the video. Once you watch it, you'll understand why I couldn't resist. I'm sorry, but I just couldn't resist kind of a cheap shot, but he deserves it. Whoops. Can you guys hear that? Whoops. Let me, it's everything's on the wrong thing. Let's see. Let's see now if, if you can hear this. Let me know somebody if you cannot or can. Here is Tucker. Now Joe Biden is calling for an unconditional surrender from Vladimir Putin. Here's the weird thing. By any actual reality based measure, Vladimir Putin is not losing the war on Ukraine. He is winning the war on Ukraine. All right. And Joe Biden looks at that and says, we won't stop until you proffer an, I'm going to, I'm going to play that again. Not actual reality based measure reality based is not losing the war on Ukraine. He is winning the war on Ukraine. And Joe Biden looks at that and says, we won't stop until you proffer an unconditional surrender. This isn't bad policy. This is nuts. It makes no sense. In fact, it only makes sense if the goal is to completely destroy the West in order to make way for Chinese global dominance. What would be the other explanation for this behavior? Well, the only other explanation that exists, Tucker Carlson, is that you're nuts. You have no idea what you're talking about. You are completely out of your league. You don't know what's going on in the world, you know, together with many, unfortunately, of your colleagues on the right. You have lost the script. You have lost it. You're insane. Now, no, that not only is this an opportunity for Tucker Carlson to go after Biden. We'll get to that in a minute. Go after Biden. You know, as if this was a Biden war and we need to support Putin because Biden's against Putin. So, instinctively, we have to support Putin because we hate the left. But more than that, he ascribes a motive for Biden's support of Ukraine. And the motive is, he literally says this, right? The motive is the destruction of the West in order to support China. So, Tucker here is implying Biden is working for China. And that this whole episode is about Western civilization. And again, echoing Jordan Peterson that Russia is on the side of Western civilization.  And I've been telling you about him for years, months, years. Hopefully, now it's revealed. Now everybody can see it. Now, granted, you know, people are saying on the chat, you know, it's only, it's one raid. This isn't a raid, people. I don't know if you've ever noticed a raid. Again, we'll go over the map in a minute. This isn't a raid. This is a massive move of the Ukrainian military and a crushing of the Russian. Now, it could reverse. Wars can take turns. Things could change. The Russians could rebound. Maybe the Russians have a bunch of troops on the Russian side of the border that we don't know about. Then they're going to regroup and they'll defeat the Ukrainians and crush them. Of course, Putin could launch a tactical nuke. We'll get to that later. Yeah, everything's possible. Right now, right now, everything suggests Ukraine is winning this war. They won the war in the first week. When the Russians had to retreat from Kiev, when they had to retreat from northern-east Ukraine, when they had to retreat from all those places, that's when the Ukrainians won the war. Then it was just a matter of time. Then, when the Americans started significant numbers of western weapons, the Russians didn't have a chance. Russians can't compete with their weapons against western weapons. One of the things that this war has illustrated without any question or without any doubt is the massive superiority of American and western technology over Russian technology, over Russian weapons systems. Why anybody in the world would buy another Russian weapon is beyond me. Russia is starting to deal to buy drones from Iran. Iran, the bastion of modern, sophisticated weaponry. And it turns out that the North Koreans have been supplying them with weapons.  So Russia is being defeated. Any way you look at it, Russia is being defeated. And what is winning this battle is, A, the Ukrainians fighting for their own homes and therefore having the motivation, the passion, the incentive, the selfish reason to go to war, and the fact that the West has provided them with weapons systems that are far superior and don't even come close to what the Russians can deploy. All right, let's quickly pull up a map. I want to talk about what's actually happening on the ground. Then we're going to go to, we're going to talk about the consequence of this, where this goes from here. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff. Okay, so here's a map of Ukraine. You can see Ukraine within the context of kind of Eastern Europe. Everything to the right, as you look at the map, everything to the east is Russia. You can see north is Belarus. Next to Belarus, of course, is Russia to the north. Poland is to the west. Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova. But you can see Ukraine is also a big country. It's not a small country. Just look at the distance between Kiev and Lviv in the west, Kiev and Donetsk in the east, or down to Gelsan or Dessa in the south. So you can see the red segments here, the red with black outline are areas that the Russians took in 2014, both Crimea, that's in the bottom in the south, and on the east there, Donetsk, which is an area that the Russians took in 2014, and there's been kind of on and off battles over there since 2014, really. The rest of the red outlines is areas that the Russians have taken during this war. Of course, this is what they took in this war, only post their retreat from Kiev. So what we're not seeing here is what they took and then the Ukrainians pushed them out of, which is the area around Kiev and the area in the very northeast of Ukraine, which I'm hiding in the map, which they had originally invaded. The blue here are areas in which the Ukrainians so far have taken back from the Russians. So these are areas where the Ukrainians have pushed the Russians back, including up to about 24 hours ago. So this includes a segment that was recaptured by the Ukrainians about 24 hours ago. It doesn't include what has been happening since then. I'll try to fill you in into what's been happening since. All right, so we're going to move the map around a little bit so you'll tolerate this. We're going to put this in the center and we're going to grow this so we can zoom in. So let's just look at this. So here you have the basic region of the war. You can see in the south, you can see this city called Kherson, which is occupied by the Russians. This is the area where you see the blue outline here in the bottom. This is the area in which the Ukrainians have been fighting over the last few weeks where they announced that they were launching an offensive. This map doesn't reflect Ukrainian advances because the Ukrainians are not advertising and the Russians are not declaring what is actually going on. Whatever advances are happening here are very, very, very slow so far. However, one thing you can't see in this map unfortunately is just under Gesson. Just south of Gesson, there's a river. A river that goes to the Black Sea in the west and goes up through the east. That is the river that you've been hearing about where the Ukrainians have been bombing all the bridges. Bombing all those bridges prevents the Russians from continuously bringing in new troops into the Gesson area. My guess is that everything north of that river, including the city of Gesson, will fall to the Ukrainians within weeks, maybe sooner than that. And then it's just a question of the Ukrainians figuring out how to cross the river or figuring out how to attack that region from the north. There's even fear among Russian military bloggers. These are people, these are Russian nationalists who are writing about the war and are very critical of Putin because they think he hasn't been tough enough. And they think that the Russian military is disgracing the nation. There is even fear that the Ukrainian army could attack Crimea and retake Crimea. Let me just show you Crimea quickly. That is Crimea, that segment. So what has happened is over the last couple of months, the Russians have been pulling troops in the east and moving them to the Gesson area to back up troops over there. And many of the troops have been stationed here in the south. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are using long range US missile launchers and artillery precision weapons to basically take out the bridges, the logistical supply routes. They've even bombed through special forces operations. They bombed major logistical centers in Crimea itself. They've been undermining Russian logistics in the south for weeks now. This has only intensified Russia's certainty that the attack was going to come from the north and therefore they've been pulling troops from the Kharkiv area, from the north of Donetsk to the south in order to reinforce their troops there. That has been going on, as I said, for weeks and that has weakened the Russian presence in the east. Now note, Russia has a real problem finding troops. By some estimates, this war has cost the Russians 50,000 troops, 50,000. That's a lot of people to replace. And they just don't have them. They're trying to recruit all over without declaring a draft. Putin is very afraid of a draft. So they're trying to recruit volunteers. They're not getting a lot of volunteers. They're recruiting volunteers primarily and paying a lot of money for the volunteers primarily in some of the ethnic minorities that Russia controls. We'll talk about those ethnic minorities later. But the problem there is maybe they are going to come and fight but they're not motivated. They don't care. They have no connection to Ukraine. So the quality of the troops is very low in addition to everything else. I just want to zoom in here on the south a little bit. Let's see if we can zoom in and maybe see that. Maybe if I zoom in it'll show the river. The internet's slow. Move. All right, there we go. Zoom. Yeah, it won't zoom in more than that. All right. We'll skip that. We're going to go east. Zoom in more here. Huh. All right, there we go. That's better zoom. All right. Now we want to zoom out. Whoops. This is all over the place. Sorry guys. All right. Here is the city of Kharkiv. Now what's interesting about the city of Kharkiv is in the early days of the war, there was a major focus of the Russians. They tried to take the city and they failed. It was one of the early failures of the war for the Russians. They could not take the city, the city held, and you could see the Russians occupied all the way to the ring road that circles the city but they couldn't break into the city. Since then, the Ukrainians have been pushing the Russians back and back and further back to the point where in some areas they pushed them all the way back to the Russian border. You can see that in the north here. You can see that the blue is reaching all the way to the Russian border. What's happened in the last few days is that the Russian, that from Kharkiv, the Ukrainians have pushed southeast and they have advanced southeast at a rapid pace. They've basically taken over 3,000, maybe it's up to 5,000 square kilometers just over the last two to three days. They have slowly pushed the Russians back. What this does, what this blue area here that you can see, particularly the portion that is kind of curving in towards the city called Izhum, what this has done is it's cut off the supply roads that the Russians were supplying the troops at the front in Izhum and everything to the south and to the west of Izhum all the way down to a city, a town you can see in the bottom here by the name of Liman, L-Y-M-A-N. You can see it down in the center of your screen on kind of the center down in the south. Now what's happened since this map was made, that is what has happened in the last 24 hours or less, maybe in the last 12 hours, is that Izhum and Liman have both fallen to the Ukrainians. That is the Russians have retreated from both of those towns and indeed it looks like this highway, you can see it here labeled in 26 that they have reached that highway and you see the city here called Svotev. They might, rumors have it, no confirmation yet, that they have reached Svotev which basically would cut off all of the Russians to the west and including many of the supply lines to the south. So I don't remember if you heard that I said that since this map was made the Ukrainians have taken Izhum and they've taken Liman which are two very strategic locations and represent kind of the western push that the Russians were making but it's more than just a western push. Let me zoom out a second and give you a sense of what's going on here. What you get from the Izhum and the Liman locations is that the Russians were hoping to drive south from there and basically be able to cut off the Ukrainian military and surround it and destroy it and instead what has happened is the exact opposite. Instead what has happened is that the Ukrainians have now taken Izhum and Liman and as a consequence of that all of this area, all the way to Svotev which is right in the center of your screen there is now maybe probably we will see occupied by the Ukrainians. Rumors have it that the Ukrainians are already at Svotev but we don't have confirmation and with respect to Liman and with respect to Izhum we have confirmation from the Russians themselves telling us that the Ukrainians have already captured that area. What this means now is that much of the red, much of the red at the top part here is now blue and that the Ukrainians are in the process of pushing the Russians to the Russian border and freeing up all of Khalkiv province. Next we are looking at the red area to the south of that. You see the city Lychonsk, something like that. There is already again rumors or some data suggesting that the Ukrainians are pushing towards that city that is a city that the Russians took about two months ago in a major battle and it was considered a major victory for the Russians. It looks like the Ukrainians are making a concerted effort to push to that city and to recapture it. Slowly I think what you're going to see is this red on the top here turning into blue and ultimately what you'll also see is the southern front turning in Ukraine's favor. This is the turning point. It's a major turning point I think. This is the first time other than the retreat of the Russian army from Kiev and from the rest of the very northeast. Since then this is the first time the Ukrainians have made significant progress, fast progress. Up until now the war is being more of a war of a kilometer here, a kilometer there. We're talking about three to five thousand square kilometers liberated by the Ukrainians and where the Russians have been defeated. This is a turning point in the war. I think it's a turning point in Russia's confidence. This is a route as it looks right now. Again, fog of war, who knows what will happen tomorrow. But it certainly looks that way right now.  And the question now is how does this play out? What happens next? What happens next? All right, let's see. Let's cut off. We don't need the map anymore. So what happens now really depends on a few things. One is to what extent can the Ukrainians continue this momentum on the ground? To what extent is Russia going to fold? How much of a fight are they willing to put up? Are the Russian soldiers motivated to fight? Are the Russian colonels, are the Russian generals motivated to fight? At least the generals and colonels who are still alive. To what extent is Russia really able to, willing to continue to fight this war? And to what extent is it all just going to fail? And in that sense, the second part of this really is what is Moscow going to do? That is, what is Putin going to do? Or what are the people around Putin going to do? Can Putin survive what appears to be a Russian loss? Can his regime survive by just replacing Putin and putting something else in his place? If Putin is replaced and Putin doesn't survive, who replaces him? Is it somebody more liberal, somebody more nationalist, who's going to spend the next few years building up the Russian military and spending gazillions of dollars on that? What is the trajectory from Russia from here forward? This is of course going to determine everything in terms of the future. This is very difficult to estimate. I don't know enough about the internal politics within Russia to say, but I will say this, and I've been saying it for months now, but I will say this. Russia as a country is in massive decline. And this is just one more data point reflecting that decline. The Russian economy was a mess before the war. The Russian economy is an unmitigated disaster as a consequence of the war, as a consequence of sanctions, and as a consequence of Putin's authoritarian government. Demographically, Russia is a shrinking country. It is a country with a shrinking population. Not only have almost 500,000 of Russia's best people left since the war began, but Russia just, Russians just don't have kids. Russians are having kids at a rate of maybe 1.2, 1.4, which is far below replacement cost and basically involves a significant shrinking of the country. Russia is an aging population. The generation born after World War II in the optimism generated from the victory over the Germans, combined with Stalin's horrific dictatorship, that generation is dying off. There are not a lot of young Russians, and again, young Russians have been leaving Russia for decades now. Much of Russia is composed of ethnic groups. Russia is a very multi-ethnic society. I know people have this image of Russians, particularly the new rate of Russia representing white power or whatever. Russia is a very diverse country. East of the Uals is Asia, occupied by Asians who look physically more like Chinese or Mongolians than they do Europeans. South of Russia, the Caucasus and other places are filled with all kinds of ethnic groups, including many Muslims. Russia has a relatively large Muslim population. Many of these ethnic groups don't like being part of Russia. I'll give you just one example of this. Chechnya, you probably all heard of Chechnya. Russia has fought two wars with Chechnya. I wonder if we can see Chechnya on this map. Let's see if we can see Chechnya on the map. Chechnya would be on the other side. We'll find Chechnya in a minute. There it is, the other republics. Here's a map. Let me give you the map again. That's not it. There's the map. Just to give you a sense of where this is, we'll go up. There's Ukraine, there's Crimea. You can see them with the way top left over there. Then you've got these planes, which are part of southern Russia. You've got the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea on the left, the Caspian Sea on the right. Then you've got these mountains here with Georgia on the other side of the mountains, Armenia and Azerbaijan on the other side of the mountains. But on those foothills, everything closer in those mountains that goes from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, those are small little republics. You can see the Republic of Adyajah and Cherkis and North Ostecia, that used to be part of Georgia in the Russians, took it. The Republic of Dagestan and we can push it further down. You can see the republics in the north here. And Chechnya is in here among these republics. And the Russians have fought two wars in Chechnya. Chechnya is Muslim and the Chechens want independence. The Chechens don't want to be part of Russia. The Chechens wanted independence and they fought two wars to establish independence. Some of those wars, the Chechens basically were fighting on the side of the slumists and were basically the Chechens represented the slumists. But a big part of it was nationalism, was the idea that they wanted to be separate from Russia. They won't state. Russia expended huge amounts of resources. Huge amounts of resources in people, in weapons, in arms, in order to defeat the Chechens. Ultimately the only way they could defeat the Chechens is by, what do you call it, finding allies within the Chechens who would fight the people who are not the allies. So finding divisions among the Chechens and utilizing those. But Russia fought a bloody long war over Chechnya. Now imagine the Chechens sitting back today and thinking, huh, the Russian military is depleted. It's folding. It is retreating. The Russians are fully occupied in Ukraine. This would kind of be a good time maybe for us to assert unnationalist desires. They're not all radical slumists. Some of them are. And some of them are. And it's not clear how many of them and it's not clear what percentage, but some of them certainly were. But the Chechens could decide this is a good chance to try to establish independence. So could a lot of other parts of Russia use this opportunity to suit their independence, to separate themselves from Russia. This could be, this could be a time, an opportunity basically for the breakup and the dissolution of Russia. I don't know that that's going to happen. That's pretty radical. It would be pretty amazing if it happened. It would completely destroy that particular power base within Europe. And I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing for those of us who care about the West and civilization. But in any case, the defeat of the Russian army in Ukraine is not going to be limited to there. People are going to learn from it, think of it and take advantage of it. And Russia could be, this could just be the beginning of what could land up being much, much more trouble for Russia. Again, economics, really bad war before the war, worse today. Demographics, really bad war before the war. You just killed and maimed tens of thousands of Russians that only makes it worse. And now militarily Russia has been defeated. Europe and the rest of the world is finding alternative sources of natural gas than Russia. Russia is in deep, deep trouble and will be in deep, deep trouble for years and decades to come. The question of course is, if Putin survives or if he's replaced by an even more nationalist leader, what does Russia do? Does it out of desperation use a tactical nuke? Does it out of desperation create an accident at one of the nuclear power plants in Ukraine? Remember, the Chernobyl was in Ukraine, is in Ukraine, in North. What does Russia actually do? How does it respond? There is no other side to the story. Let's be clear, Russia is in the wrong here from the beginning. I have given you all sides of this and I've given you the full analysis from day one. And in spite of it all, in spite of the fact that I've been right from day one. You know, let's wait six months. You know, six months ago, I said things would happen if I put pretty much the way I said they would. Let's see six months from now how they turn out. But Russia deserves everything bad that's happening to it. Let's hope that Russia out of desperation does not decide to use nukes. Let's hope that out of desperation, Russia doesn't lush out. It does seem like Russia has stopped providing natural gas to Western Europe, but Russia cannot sustain that. The reality is that Russia depends on that natural gas for whatever its economy has. Whatever its economy produces, whatever its economy produces, all of what its economy produces is natural gas and oil. Oil is fungible and is not delivered by pipeline, so oil is in a global market that will continue to sell their oil. But natural gas, there is no other pipeline, they have to sell it to Europe. So they can shut down the pipeline, but they have to sell it. And yes, prices of energy are going to go through the roof. Yes, Europe is going to suffer tremendously because they've been cut off from Russian gas this year, maybe even next year. But what this has done is forced, and we talked about this last week, has forced the Europeans to seek out alternatives. They now have a deal to import gas from Israel and from Egypt. They have a deal to import gas from Oman and the Persian Gulf. The Norwegians that have the largest natural gas reserves in Europe are starting to increase the amount of natural gas they're pumping out. The Germans are building LNG ports as are other European countries and the United States is committed to exporting more natural gas. Over the long run, Europe can solve its Russian dependency problem. Now, part of that Russian dependency problem is the Europe's own making, shutting down nuclear power plants doesn't help. But there are alternatives sources of supply for natural gas. It just takes time. It takes time. And with Russia weakened, and by the way, my prediction is that by within a couple of months, within a couple of months natural gas will be flowing again to Europe from Russia. Russia can't sustain its economy without those euros, without those dollars. They can't do it. All right, what else? Okay, one more last point about all of this, and then I'll go to the Super Chat. I know there are quite a few Super Chat questions, and critical thinkers have been waiting for a long time to have these questions answered. One last point, and this point relates to China. It turns out that she has a meeting with Putin this coming week in Uzbekistan. It'll be interesting to see if that meeting happens. The Indian Premier is going to meet up with them. This is supposed to be their launching of the Asian century. This is going to be the century of Asia. United Front of China, Russia, and India. I think China is starting to regret this alliance with Russia. China is not happening with what's going on in Russia. China is not happy with Russia being defeated the way it is. China has to be looking at that and saying, ooh, don't want that happen to us. China is probably looking at those weapon systems from Russia. Weapon systems that China has mimicked for many years and saying maybe Taiwan is not such an easy nut to crack. Maybe we shouldn't be so eager. China is also thinking, do we really want to be aligned with losers? Is that really the future? And of course, as I told you for months now, China is in massive problems. Its economy is probably shrinking right now. Its population is almost certainly shrinking right now, demographically. Its military can do all the exercises around Taiwan that it wants, but its military knows that the price of taking Taiwan is unthinkable, I think, in their minds right now. China has invested gazillions of dollars in semiconductors with almost nothing to show for it. Chinese entrepreneurs are hesitant. And, you know, if the United States opened up its immigration system to Chinese to come to America, there would be a massive brain drain out of China. But anyway, we still have to talk about immigration. So I think China is looking at this. I think she is going to give Putin a talking to in Uzbekistan, a real talking to. So, no, defeating Russia is a hit on China. Defeating Russia is going to make China think twice about going for Taiwan. Defeating Russia maybe, maybe somewhere at the edge of consciousness, reminds the Chinese or makes evidence to the Chinese that the West is still a power to be dealt with, and then maybe authoritarian regimes like their own still have something to learn, still have something to strive towards. It's going to be very interesting. And this is going to be, it's going to be, I'm going to be in Asia next week, so it'll be interesting to talk to Japanese and talk to Koreans and get their assessment of what is going on in China. But it's going to be very interesting later on this fall when the Chinese Communist Party has its big five-year Shindig and when they appoint, when they appoint Xi, dictator for life, it's, I mean, unfortunately, I wish we could be inside those sessions and understand Chinese to know what they're saying, because I think Xi is going to find a little bit of resistance. And I think there's going to be a lot of questioning of his judgment. Is zero COVID policy right? Should we aback the Russians in this war? Are we alienating the West and are we alienating the Americans, who we still depend on for our economic growth? Are you managing the economy well? There you go. All you need to know about people who support Russia just showed its ugly, horrible, disgusting face on the Iran book Super Chat. Stephen 13, who's been pro-Russia all along, writes, I hope Russia uses tactical nukes. This is how desperate they are. This is how desperate they are. This is how evil they believe the West is. This is how evil they believe everything about the West is. Everything about America is. Everything about Europe is.  There is a segment of the right that encompasses some libertarians, many libertarians. I saw this meme of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire depicting the Ukrainian president as Hitler. I posted that and said, this is why I never want to be considered a libertarian. But there are elements in what you'll call the Paleo-right, Paleo-libertarians, Paleo-conservatives, should really be called Neanderthal-right. There are elements within the Neanderthal-right that love Putin. That love, Stephen, I'm all for winning. I'm all for the good guys winning. And that's why I hope very much what we see is a complete and utter collapse of the Russian army, a complete retreat from all of Ukraine. I hope the Ukrainians don't stop that they go into Crimea and they retake Crimea. I hope that the Ukrainians retake the Donask region and that they re-establish the borders of pre-2014 for Ukraine and that Russia is thoroughly and systematically humiliated as they deserve to be. And that maybe, maybe, maybe one of the lessons the American right learns from this is that strong men don't win. That authoritarianism in all its guises is a losing strategy. That long term, as messy, as messy, is our relatively free, relatively liberal in the classical sense countries are, and here I include Western Europe, the United States, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and so on. As messy as they are, as offensive as they are sometimes in violating our rights, they are far better than the regime in China. They are far better than the regime in Russia. They are far better than the regime in Hungary. And that the battle is not for who can get the better strong men. The battle should be and must be on establishing greater freedom in those countries where freedom is still possible. So, I hope that Putin is thoroughly, systematically defeated. And for those of you asking, is Ukraine free? It's as free as many Eastern European countries are. It is and was significantly freer than Russia was, is. I found Russia to be the most oppressive of all the countries I visited, more oppressive than China. So, free in terms of your individual liberties, no country is completely free. But Ukraine is by far, was by far better than the horrors of Russia. Zelensky, with all the criticism you can load on him in how he governed, and certainly there's a lot to criticize, was far better. Far more respecting of individual liberties than Putin has ever been, particularly Putin of the last ten years, that has become more and more and more authoritarian. So, no, there's no comparison. Is Europe free? Is the United States free? Not as free as I'd like it to be, but freer than the bad guys in the world. Ukraine was corrupt? Ukraine was corrupt?  Is Brazil a free country? Basically, yes. Is Russia more corrupt than Ukraine? By far. It's just the differences, that in Russia the corruption is institutionalized. The corruption comes from the top, and who is probably the richest man in the world? Is Vladimir Putin, who has actually created zero amount of wealth, arguably, destroyed wealth. And yet, his Swiss bank accounts are bigger than any oligarch from Ukraine, or any Russian oligarch. If that's not corruption, I don't know what is corruption. Russia is probably the most corrupt country in the world today. So, God, frozen again, huh? Don't try to justify Putin. There's nothing to justify. There's nothing good about him. You can be critical of Zelensky, you can be critical of Ukraine, you can be critical of Biden, you can be critical of Trump, you can be critical of the UK, and Germany, and France, and all these countries. And yet, you can realize that they are far better than Russia, and than China. All right. I don't know, the sun is out now, the rain has stopped. Let's hope my internet service provider gets their act together while we're here. I'm hoping that, like, critical thinker is still here, he hasn't left, because I do have answers for all these questions. What I will do is I'll sew together the two videos that comprise the show, put them together, and republish this video at some point later. So you will get the whole thing, and you can share it, and you can tell your friends about it, and you can get it out there, because hopefully we can get some good viewership for this video. We had a lot of people on live before everything kind of crashed. And Catherine is here. Catherine, it's about time you showed up. I mean, video is frozen, we've had lots of drama. Here, this is the state of the super chat. We're obviously desperately in need of your services, because there's still $275 shorts. Catherine, go for it. And any critical thinker is here. So excellent. So let's do some of the questions. Let me start with Alexis who put $50 into it, or $52, if you buy the exchange rate between the pound and the dollar. Alexis says, what would be the impact that of a crushing Putin humiliation on the nasty right, any chance of going back to sanity? I don't think so. I think as you saw from who is it, Stephen 13, what the nasty right will say is that Putin was weak. Putin was too Western. This is what Dugan will say. This is what the nationalists, Russians would say. And this I think is what some of the nationalists in the U.S. will say. We'll see what Tchaikovsky says. But they will say he was too weak. He caved. He was too humane. He didn't go all out. He didn't engage in total war. He could have beaten Ukraine, but he was soft. He was soft. No, unfortunately, unfortunately, it's rare that the, you know, people on the right have anybody on the left have a rewakening, awakening because the site has been defeated. However, I will say this. What happens when a site is defeated, like I think the new right is being defeated right now in Russia, is that they have fewer recruits. Few people are attracted to them. So in that sense, in that sense, it is, it is a very positive thing. It is, it is good. Let me just do something here and then I'll be right back. I just want to post on Twitter again. Still, still talking Russia and Ukraine. Trying to get some of the people we lost before back to the show. We'll see if we can do that. All right. So thank you, Alexis, that was very generous. And it's good to see you on the live show again. All right. Critical thinker. He's been waiting a long time for this. And I'm going to do all the critical thinker's questions because he has been waiting a long time. Some of them are $20. Some of them are less, but we'll do them all at the same time. Let's start with this $20 question. Germany, he says, let's start.  That is the Attila. And this he's referring to Ayn Rand's essay for the new intellectual where Ayn Rand talks about. Attila and the witch doctor. Every Attila man of muscle needs an intellectual to support him. And the intellectual, the evil intellectual always needs an Attila to support. And they go hand in hand. You see this in Saudi Arabia with the Sauds and the Wahhabis. You saw it in Russia with the Zaws and Rasputin. You saw it in France with, I forget the name of the religionist. But there's always this, evil always goes together. The strong man and the ideologue, the witch doctor, the man of ideas.  The Attila yet embraced Kant, the witch doctor. Russians went straight to try killing Dugan, the witch doctor. Does this mean that Russians take ideas even more seriously than the Germans? I mean, this depends on a number of different assumptions here. You can't say in the case of the Nazis that Kant was the witch doctor. Kant was long dead. And Kant would have not necessarily supported the particular manifestation of his philosophy in Hitler. In that sense Kant is the witch doctor to Dugan, to Putin because he's more fundamental than Dugan is. Dugan is only possible in some regards because of Kant. Kant is the witch doctor to every bad guy in the modern world. And that's not meaningful. What actually happens existentially in reality is that a strong man has on his side a witch doctor who advocates an ideology to justifies the horror that the Attila brings or forces on his own people. It's what motivates people to go to war. Hitler was an Attila but Hitler was also a witch doctor. And Hitler also had witch doctors at his side. Goebbels, others who were the ideologues of the Nazi regimes, the people who facilitated. But Hitler was in some sense is unique and maybe unique in the modern era or unique in any era in that Hitler himself was the promoter of the ideas that he advocated for and was the guy who muscled them through. But he had a whole staff, if you will, of ideologues supporting him, witch doctors that supported him. So it's not kind of a one-on-one, every Attila has one witch doctor. It doesn't quite work that way. It's the idea that Iron Man is getting to is that Attila, the man of muscle, the man of force must ultimately convince the people not just with force but with ideas, with an agenda, with an ideology, with a dream, with a vision. And that vision is the greatness of the Aryan people, which Hitler was very good at articulating. And again he had people like Hassan, Goebbels and others who helped articulate it with him. Or whether it's Putin who has this idea of Russian national greatness, the Russian spirit, the Russian whatever, mystical view, the Dugan. But many others, not just Dugan, others help articulate. So the first issue is, I don't see Hitler as purely an Attila, Hitler is more than an Attila, because Hitler was the primary spokesman for the mystical ideology that motivated Nazism. But I also don't know who tried to kill Dugan. Was it Russians? Was it the Ukrainian secret service? Was it somebody else? I don't know. Did he owe a lot of debts? I don't know.  Until we know that, we will know the power dynamics within Russia and the power dynamics among the Russian people and what they're trying to push for and what they're trying to achieve. So it's very difficult to think about this. Generally the Russians are not more serious about ideas than the Germans. The Russians tend to be far more mystical than the Germans. And therefore Russian orthodoxy and the kind of the mysticism of Dugan appeals to them more than I think that that kind of view would appeal to the Germans. So the Russians don't need philosophers to lead them. If you listen to Dugan, that's a mishmash of garbage, of nonsensical stuff. It's non-coherent and certainly non-rational.  So I don't think the Russians are more serious about ideas or less serious about ideas than the Germans. I think all people ultimately are guided by ideas whether they know it or not. That's the key to the new intellectual essay. That ideas shape history and they shape history through the intellectuals. And sometimes through their tillers that latch themselves onto those intellectuals. All right, let's see, did he have no other $20 questions but some $10 questions? So let's do, we've got three of those. Okay, critical think is still going. He says, the poor today equals richer than the medieval czars. That is true. The czar equals a symbol of Russian ideal in a certain sense, yeah? Now everyone is a rich czar already, no need for Gucci and Apple. So why would sanctions ever force Russia to change? I don't really understand any of this. So everybody is a czar maybe in terms of wealth. But that's not why a czar is idealized. That's not why a czar is respected or longed for. The czar is power. The czar is the ability to use force to get his way. The czar is the serfs groveling before him. The key about a czar is not his wealth. It's not that what they wanted. The Russian people are not primarily materialistic. What they want is power. What they want is a sense of Russian greatness, which is what they think they had under the czar. Of course they didn't, Russia was never great. And of course the sanctions matter because the sanctions are making Russians poorer. And they will make Russians even poorer the longer they last. So Apple and Gucci are necessary to make the Russians feel rich. They're gone and the Russian economy can't make them feel rich because the Russian economy is not a rich producing of what producing economy. It is a resource-based economy which can't feed the Russians at the kind of level of wealth that they have grown to expect. But it's not even that sanctions are geared towards forcing Russia to change. Grants, sanctions will not force Russia to change. Russia is used to poverty. Poverty is, you know, par for the course in terms of Russians. What the sanctions are really doing is squeezing Russia financially. Squeezing Russia financially so it cannot afford a war. It cannot build new weapons. It cannot restock the weapons that it already has. The sanctions are forcing Russia, make Russia far more dependent on its natural gas export. So in the end it can't really afford to stop gas from flowing. So sanctions are working in a sense that they're impoverishing Russia and making it impossible for them to have the financial resources to build new tanks or the equipment to build new tanks. It turns out that most of the Russian weapons systems acquire parts from the West. Parts they cannot get. Or parts from, you know, the aviation airlines. Parts from Boeing. Parts they cannot get. So after that, you know, they can get them from maybe a little bit from China, although China is hesitant. They can get them a little bit from Iran, North Korea. But they're not going to fight a war with the support of Iran and North Korea. That's not going to generate anything. And indeed, the defeat of Russia, which we're witnessing I think right now, is going to push China away from Russia.  I mean, who knows? China might take advantage of this and reclaim some territories in Siberia that it claims are theirs. All right, critical thinker also asked, if only change in the spiritual space to stare at on a news map is what winning losing means to Putin, why not first retake all spacious, useless, undefended areas for Ukraine for CNN so Putin retreats? I don't really understand the question. So if we took all the spacious, useless, undefended areas of Ukraine and put them on a map, why would Putin retreat? I don't get the question. I don't understand it. But the point is not that Putin just wants to stare at a map. The point is that Putin wants power. He wants power over Ukraine. He wants power over an empire. He wants the sense that there is a Russian empire and that Russian empire is efficacious and powerful and a player in the world. I mean, a lot of this is about being a player. For a very long time, certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union, the world has been dominated by one superpower. Russia wants to be a superpower. And so it wants to dominate the space called Ukraine and dominate its people in order to boost their own self-esteem. But we know that force does not boost your self-esteem. A map doesn't give you a sense of anything. It's boots on the ground. How much power do you exert yourself? How much power over people? Not maps, maps are meaningless. All right, we have one more question from Critical Thinker. If witch doctors are more crucial than atillers and prime ministers must regularly meet the monarch for advice, doesn't monarchy have power for better or for worse if the ruling monarch has agency?  So this relates, I think, to England. They have some power in the sense of they have some moral authority. They're respected, they're looked up to, they have a bully pulpit. But they don't have any existential power and their power is very limited. If the monarch turned against the government in England, for example, I think they would lose whatever power they have very quickly. So I don't think that this is an issue of witch doctors and atillers. Prime ministers might be atillers, but monarchs are not witch doctors. Monarchs are just symbols. It's a symbol. People like symbols. Symbols are valuable. But they're not more than just a ceremony and a symbol. They don't really have any existential power. They don't really have any influence beyond what they say and the degree to which they move the people. And then, again, if they deviated outside of kind of what was acceptable for a monarch to say, they would lose that power. So they're very limited in scope. And Catherine has just donated $5 to remind you all that we are $206 short of our goals. So just a reminder to spur you on. Okay, I'm going to go for the $20 and $50 questions. We've got one for $50 from Shazbot. I know I still owe you a couple of TV shows and I owe somebody a music thing. So I'll be working on that. Shazbot says, thanks for the Ukraine-Russia update. I don't expect it today, but I hope you can also give us an update on the war between Eminus 7 and Vendikar soon. That's the Star Trek, I'm sure. I apologize. I'm sure I'm going to watch those two episodes on my flight to Korea on Tuesday. And one of my shows from Korea will cover those two episodes. All right, let's go through this. I'm looking for relevant ones. Themaster says, if Chechnya attacks Russia, shouldn't they be worried about the nukes? Yeah, but Russia has never used nukes against Chechnya. They fought two very brutal, very disastrous wars. A lot of Russians lost their lives. Chechnya, I mean, the main city in Chechnya was flattened completely in that war, and the Russians never used nukes. So again, it's within Russia. Nukes in Chechnya would impact Russian territory, and Russia considers the Chechens Russian citizens. It's a civil war more than anything else. But it would be a worse secession. And Russia has never used nukes on its own people before. It's never used nukes, period, on anybody. John Bayell says, Russian city officials are calling for Putin resignation. St. Petersburg officials call for Putin to be charged with treason. Hopefully, this trend will continue. Yes, I mean, granted, the Moscow city officials were minor officials, not major officials, but it did come from St. Petersburg and has come now from the outskirts of Moscow. Sorry, I think there are more calls. There's a lot of people watching Moscow right now. As I said, if I were Putin, I wouldn't go near a window in a high-rise because you know Russians falling out of windows. I did a show on that. All right, let's go from there. Matthias says, thanks for the best analysis around concerning the Ukraine war. Appreciate that. Thank you, Matthias. Okay, we'll go for that.  And they dismissed me when I told them that I've done a lot. I don't know what the continuation of that was. Then I know Ukrainians who suffered. Yeah, I mean, there's no reason for you to fight for Ukrainians. Ukrainians are doing a good enough job. I mean, as it is, I don't like the fact that the United States is just pouring money into Ukraine. I'll tax money. I don't believe in foreign aid. I think advancing them weapons to be paid for later is a good idea, although I think what's going to happen is the United States is going to help rebuild Ukraine with more foreign money, foreign help that we give. But of all the money we distribute around the world, we give money to tens and dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. The money in Ukraine is pretty well spent by defeating, I think, an enemy of the United States. So not a bad return on investment going on in Ukraine. Certainly, as compared to all the money that we give to some of the most horrific regimes all over the world. Let's quickly look at some of these. Okay, Michael says, is the right learning for the evils of Putin? If Putin were to be assassinated, would that be a game changer for the conservative nationalist movement? What does Yom Khazani think about Putin?  He's opposed to war. He's opposed to the invasion. I think he sides with Ukraine. He's a nationalist after all, and Ukraine has a border and has a nation, and he supports that. So I don't think Khazani is part of the kind of right that actually supports Putin. We saw some people on the chat here supporting him in that way. I don't think the right will learn much. I think the right will say, as I said, the extreme crazy right will say that Putin was weak, that he didn't go for full blown-out war, and I think that the more moderate right, Yom Khazani, who's still pretty bad, but the kind of national conservatives will say, they'll double up on nationalism. Nationalism being we shouldn't invade other countries, but we should promote nationalism within our own country. But what Khazani and most of the nationalists evade is the fact that nationalism always leads to war. Nationalism always leads to war. You can't separate war from nationalism. But maybe they're going to have to learn that the hard way. Roland says, go Ukraine. Thank you, Roland. That's off topic. That's off topic. That's done. Enrique says, thanks for the evaluation. That is done. All right, so I did want to say one more thing. One more thing about the war, one last thing about the war, and then I'll take the next, we've got a bunch of still-of-superchat questions that I'm going to take. One more thing about the war, that the defeat of Putin, and this is not good news, so, the defeat of, if the Russians are indeed defeated, if the Ukrainians are going to win, if Putin is defeated or is viewed as being defeated, one of the winners of that is Biden, and the Biden administration and potentially the Democrats. And while I still hope that happens, it is worrisome because the Republicans are screwing up and the position the Tkrakovsans of the world took over Ukraine has made it so that a Putin victory is a victory for the Democrats, which is not good. And it means it's less likely that the Republicans win the House of Representatives, which means more likely the Democrats control everything, which is not good. Not good. Now, Iron Man Fan Club says, you had concerns that if the Democrats hold the House in center, why is that a big issue if they're just D2 nihilists who can't last? Regulatory profile not allowed. I'm not sure what that means. Regular profile not allowed or something. Well, they can't last, but they can do a lot of damage in the meantime, and the sooner the D2s get to do their damage, the sooner the M2s get to counter them by taking over everything. So I want everything to slow down. I want everything to go at a sales pace. I want time for us to fight. I want time for us to counter the historical trend. And the more the D2s win in the short run, I don't think they can win in the long run, but the more they win in the short run, the sooner the M2s are going to come about. The M2 is the misintegrators, the religionists, the nationalists to take over. I want stalemate. I want nothing to happen. I want everybody to be bored with politics. I want the creeping authoritarianism of left and right to happen slowly. What Trump has done is accelerated the process and what the D2s on the Democratic side, the far left is doing, is accelerating the process, but that process leads to death and destruction in America. And our only hope is to slow down. Our only hope is to elect people who don't believe in these two and won't cater to these two crazy positions that will steer across the tilts maybe in one direction or another but doesn't go all out. So the fact that D2 can't survive for very long doesn't mean it can't do a lot of damage in the meantime. And the main damage that it will do is it awakens the sleeping giant, the ultimate M2. Alexis asks, hard question, what would be the impact on a global energy market of a crushing defeat of Putin? I think it actually means, again, depending on who rises to power in Russia, it probably slowly means the opening up of more gas flows, more energy flows, and therefore a reduction in the price of oil and a reduction of the price of natural gas. Not immediately, it won't happen instantaneously, but generally I think if you look at futures markets right now, the more bad news for Putin there is, the more good news there is for global markets. Now, I think part of the issue is this, how do you disentangle the impact of the warhours on markets and the impact of what our own governments and what our central banks are doing? How do you disentangle the price of energy caused by Russia versus the price of energy caused by inflation? All of that will start getting untangled if the issue in Ukraine and Russia gets resolved by Russia being defeated. But I think generally it's good for energy markets, it's good for energy markets in a sense that energy gets cheaper. It's good for financial markets generally because it takes one piece of uncertainty out of the equation. It creates a certain... We know what the outcome is, so we can now plan. All right, Paul, should Ukraine push the Russians past the original border, thoughts surrounding that kind of situation? I don't think they will. I don't think they will because I don't think they want to create a situation where they are the invaders or they are the occupiers or the Russian hates them forever. Do I think they should? I also think that if they invade, if they actually occupy Russian territory, it increases the probability Russian will use tactical nukes. So I think they'll stay away from that. I also think if they do that, they'll lose the support of the West. I mean, if this is a war between NATO and Russia, then yeah, I think NATO should do everything to crush Russia completely, but it's not, it's Ukraine, so Ukraine should just recapture its own borders and hope that Russia doesn't have the resources, doesn't have the resources. Alexis says his oil stocks will tank if I'm right. Yes, I think that's right. I think Monday all stocks should go down would be my guess, right? We'll see, we'll see. So I don't think they'll occupy any Russian land because they're afraid of the nukes. They should be. Okay, quickly on other topics unrelated to this. Will student loan forgiveness hurt the Democrats in the midterms? Is it enough to create a red wave? Degree inflation is really crippling American competitiveness and creating generations of debt slaves. No, I mean, I don't see any signs of a red wave created by the debt forgiveness. There's also, remember, blue wave created by Rosa versus Wade. There's also this one Ukraine now that's going to impact the elections and Biden, if the Ukrainians win, Biden will take credit for that. There's a lot going on and there's also really, really, really bad Republican candidates, although in some places it looks like maybe the Republican candidates are gaining ground on their Democrats. So between now and November it's going to be very hard to tell what's going to happen, but I just don't, I don't see a red wave unless something happens and maybe I'm missing the degree to which there's angst around this student loan forgiveness. Maybe, but I don't see it yet. Liam says off topic, but I was listening to Blake Scholes talk about boom airlines. He gives off great benevolent, optimistic energy. He reminds me a little of Alex Epstein. Did he used to work for ARI? No, Blake has never worked for ARI. The bad news right now for boom is that Rolls Royce's were drawn from building an engine for the boom subsonic jet. So it's going to be interesting if they can find somebody to build the engine. That would be very exciting if they do. Blake is an objectivist, yes. What do you think of the facial expressions and body language of Liz's team behind her parliament, including Kemi, when she was introduced introducing the price cap? They seemed angry and laid down to me. I don't know. I didn't watch that. I didn't see it. I wouldn't be surprised. Kemi would be horrified. She knows enough economics to know that it's ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, I think the general sense is probably within.  Theme asked to ask, could some merit be given to Liz's trust if her plan is to provide, promote freedom as well as keep voters by leaning towards a free market after the winter when people stop using the heating? Let's see, right?  That's the question. I doubt it. Politicians are really this good and this long term in their thinking. Theme asked to ask, how did it go finding a solid response to circular reasoning after debating Vosch? Is there one? I don't know.  They're stuck in circular reasoning and you're not going to break them out of it. Hopefully, I did enough to cause the audience to think that he was using weird irrational reasoning so that they might have listened to me more carefully and maybe followed me at some point. There's some evidence that suggests that happened. Hoppe Campbell, do you ever think you've just rationalized your optimism? Really, the world is doomed and there's nothing that's going to stop it. We've crossed a point of no return. Sure, I think about that all the time. I am tempted to take that view. It's very tempting. But I also find it too easy because it was tempting to take that view in 1980. You could argue I and you and did. It was tempting to take that view in 1980s. Let me peek off at Harry Binswanger did back then. In the 90s, I remember in 1987, a speaker at the Objectives Conference saying that gold was going to go to 30,000. We were entering a period of hyperinflation just as inflation was being crushed. At every point, a great financial crisis now, it's easy to see doom and gloom. It's easy to see that it's going to completely collapse. But it hasn't. And because you focused on all the negatives, focused on all the doom and gloom, you missed out the positives. You missed on the good things that are happening in the world. We missed globalization. I missed globalization. I missed China and I think overall China has been a good thing for the world. I missed the complete restructuring of the American economy in the 1980s that produced. Actually, I didn't miss that. I actually called it, but a lot of people missed that actually generated a huge amount of prosperity in the United States in spite of declining culture and declining philosophy. So there's a lot going on under the surface. You can't just look at the universities. You can't just look at one country. You can't just look at one issue. But it's very easy to think the world is doomed. And I often think that and I often have to talk myself out of it and I'm not sure I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. China has been a massive good for the world. It's been a massive good for its own people. Hundreds of millions of people have come out of poverty. And China has basically lowered the cost of living and therefore raised the standard of living for people all over the world in amazing, unimaginable ways. So, net, yeah, China's been good. Now, will it continue to be? Will it be in the future? It's certainly turning away from being a good force, but it has been net good for the world. Absolutely. No question about it. It has raised your standard of living dramatically. There's a little bit of freedom in China. Anthony, off topic. Any views on Artemis-1 delays compared government NASA to many private space companies that are making great innovations at the moment? Yeah, I mean, it shouldn't be too surprising. I wish NASA just left it to the space excess of the world. Get out of the business. Maybe fund some of it for strategic reasons that the United States needs for satellites, military satellites, things like that, but let the private sector go. On the other hand, don't read too much into delays. I mean, space excess had lots of failures. Failures are not a sign of doom and gloom. All right, philosophical zombie hunter. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world, but its government is semi-authoritarian. Hong Kong prospered under British rule. How have they prospered despite not having political freedom? I mean, Hong Kong had the important features of political freedom, free speech, which is the most important freedom, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. They had all that in spite of not having the vote, not having elections, not having democracy. And you can do that for a while and you can do that, I think, in a small territory. I don't think it's scalable. Singapore has had economic freedom without political freedoms at all. That is not even free speech and not really freedom of the press. Again, you can manage that for a while in a small place, in a limited scope, with rulers that might have better ideas, benevolent dictators. But I doubt that it can last. I doubt that you can extrapolate it to a larger scale for all those reasons, for the reason that it's just inconsistent. It's inconsistent for people to be free economically and not free politically. We're seeing that in China. The little freedom, the economic freedom that the Chinese enjoyed since the 1980s has upset the political higher-ups. They're afraid that that economic freedom will manifest itself in a demand for political freedom. And that's why she is clamping down. It's why she is clamping down on economic freedom and political freedom in order to reassert the power of the Communist Party over them. But look, because they ultimately have to go together and Singapore ultimately will pay a price. Hong Kong, unfortunately, has already paid the price by basically China taking it over. But China was heading in the right direction of more freedom until about 2015. And that has accelerated since 2018 downwards towards greater authoritarianism. But that is because she saw the growing economic freedom as a threat to his political dominance. The sacred city of Knightly Valley, Trump versus Biden. Who has led a more immoral life? I don't know. I mean, they're both pretty immoral people. Different categories, different measures, they're both liars. They both exploited people. They're both scumbags. I mean, that's the best I can say about them. Neither one is a good person. In some ways, I think Trump is worse, but personality-wise. But they're both horrible people. So I don't think either one of them has led them all life. The extent of the immorality is hard to tell. I mean, it's easy to tell in their public lives, in their private lives. I mean, the way Trump has treated women and has treated women, just that disqualifies him as being a decent human being.  I don't know. A lot of people listening to the show today have not participated in the Super Chat, have not helped us get to our goal. We're still $160 short and we're running out of time because I've only got like three questions that are going to be answered pretty quickly. So 160 bucks, that's certainly doable. One person could step in and just do it. Of the 103 watching live right now, I'll just ask how many of you support the show in any way? Some of you are leaving already because I'm asking for money. But how many of you support the show in any way? On a monthly basis, on Patreon or Subscribestar.com, which is the way those of you are not listening live, hopefully are supporting the show. But you can support the show right now by using Super Chat and get us closer to that goal. All we need is $160 to make it and for Catherine to feel like she did her job today. Even though she showed up late, maybe that's why we're short because Catherine didn't show up on time. All right, Valdrin asked, why were the Jews so helpless in World War II? Well, because they were helpless because they were intellectuals. They were professionals.  It wasn't even that they just had the Germans to worry about. If the Jews were in Poland, the Poles didn't like them. The Ukrainians didn't like them. There were a few countries that really helped. Denmark, you know, in Holland, some people helped the Jews. Others didn't. Somebody snitched and told the Nazis where Anna Frank was hiding, right? So they lived among a hostile population. They were either intellectuals or poor farmers living in little villages. And what hope did they have? Now, once young Jews realized the extent, the fact that everybody was being slaughtered. They were just being killed. They were being killed in mass. Then there were some uprisings. The most famous of them was the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto. These were Polish Jews, primarily young people. They killed Germans. They took their weapons. They rebelled against them. But that was relatively late because by that point, they had nothing to lose. They realized that they were going to be slaughtered. Many Jews escaped in Ukraine and Poland and other places, Lithuania, other places, escaped into the forest and joined in Russia, joined the local partisans, and helped the partisans fight. But it was a small minority because the rest of the Jews were, again, weak, intellectual, farmers, older, and in some ways completely surprised, taken by surprise, by the brutality of it. I don't think they imagined the possibility that in the 20th century, in civilized Germany, they would just be slaughtered. It was not even a possibility in their minds. But it is sad to watch them just being led into sad and a little pathetic, certainly at some point, to watch them being led into the gas chambers, knowing exactly where they were heading and them not, I mean, at least die fighting, jumping on the guards, doing something. Die fighting. I like to believe that I would have acted differently. But it's hard to tell under those conditions and what the Nazis did to people. Hard to tell. Linda, thank you for the $20. Really appreciate it. Brian, same. Thank you for the $20. Roman, thank you for the $20. Alexis says for $20, thanks for another uniquely good show, Iran, Wolf of Life, number 13, Iran is always right. No, because it can be a Wolf of Life for you guys because that would be non-independence. Wolf of Life should be, in spite of the fact that Iran is always right, always question him. Always question what he says. Figure it out for yourself. Be independent, in other words, even when Iran is always right. All right. Paul says, interview show with Blake Scholes. Push. I've tried. Daniel says, I cannot. I recommend General Mathis' book, Call, Sign, Chaos. I don't agree with everything, but I think he's better than you think and hamstrung by politicians. All right. I'll take you up on that. And I don't know when I'll get to reading it, but I'll try. Let's see. We've got a few more, and then we're really out of questions. What's the second best philosophy ideology? Well, any form of Aristotelianism in the world today, kind of virtue ethics, the focus on virtue from a self-interested perspective, from making the best of your life, making your life the best that it can be, which Aristotelianism has impacted that. So there are virtue ethicists that are pretty good. I'd say any spin on Aristotelianism in the modern world is good. I was going to recommend this book by this woman who writes about gender studies, about not gender studies, but transgender, the whole issue about transgender, philosophy in England. I'm going to mention her in one of my future shows. I'm reading the book, and it's very good. And her analysis is quite good philosophically. So my guess is she's one of the better philosophers out there today. Thank you, guys. I mean, we are getting really, really close with $28 short. Roosevelt, thank you. Really appreciate the $20. Okay, John has a $20 question. He says, should video games be considered a classical form of art? If so, would you be open to review them? I don't know that video games have reached the level of art. I don't know that they can reach the level of art. Maybe, maybe. So I think that's something to strive for. I think it's something that maybe can be achieved. I don't know that it has been, but maybe it can be achieved. I won't review video games because I don't know how to play them. So if it involved me watching somebody else play, then maybe I could review them. But I'm not sure then I would get the full experience of it. So I don't know. I have entertained the idea that video games could be art. Other objectivists, philosophers have said that probably cannot. I think it's still an open question. But I won't review them because I can't play them. Never played video games. I played video games in the early 80s, but they don't count. Francis says, great show. Have some of my devalued currency. Thank you, Francis. I appreciate it. Sorry about the devaluation. It took us too long. It has really taken a beating. The Master says, three pounds, everybody. Thank you, The Master. Yeah, if everybody gave three pounds right now, we would easily, easily make our target. We're only $24 short. Somebody with a $20, $25 question, and we're done. Okay, we've only got two questions, so we're almost finished completely. All right, Frank says, have you seen King Charles's comments about modern architecture over the years? Do you think he has right or just didn't understand these structures? I haven't seen them. I've seen King Charles's comments on climate change and they're horrific or the great resets and they're horrific. I haven't seen his comments on architecture. I will try to catch up. He probably hates modern architecture. I actually like much of modern architecture. Not all of it. Some of it's boring, but I like a lot of it. All right. Oil W has brought us within $3.76 of our goal and Valdrin has just taken us over that. But so thank you, guys. We made it. We made our goal as usually happens when Catherine is with us, even when she comes late. So thank you, everybody who participated. Oil W says, if you were PM in the UK, how would you tackle both the cost of living and energy crisis? Well, I would immediately approve fracking in whatever lands that you had control over as Prime Minister of the UK. I would immediately approve the fracking. I would immediately approve new drilling in the North Sea or anywhere else. I would stop the massive investment going on in windmills and I would take that money and basically take it and, you know, I don't know how much of a deficit the UK government is running. So if there's a deficit, use it to cover the deficit. If not, use it for tax cut. I would immediately start building LNG ports. I would explain to the British people that they're going to pay higher energy bills over the next year or so. Hopefully not more than that. Because of what's going on in the world and because of the mismanagement of energy done by its predecessors in the Conservative Party going back to Johnson and before that in the Labour Party. So just the last few Prime Ministers who have completely mismanaged energy. But there's no shortcuts. There's no way to solve that problem without a lot of hard work. And in terms of the cost of living problem, I would encourage the central bank to raise interest rates significantly and I would start dramatically reducing government spending. Doing exact opposite of what the UK government is doing, which is increasing spending, reducing spending. So as to get the pain over with and to ground the UK economy on sondergrounds. Now part of this would have to be a massive, very, very fast deregulation of the UK economy. Massive deregulation, which would free up the entrepreneurial spirits and free up business to create wealth and to build and do everything that needs to be done. To increase supply. And I think that's how you get rid of inflation.  You cut taxes. You cut. The most important thing you do is cut regulations primarily in the energy sector and you communicate clearly to the British people the fact that there is going to be pain. But that the outcome of that pain is they're going to be so much better off than they ever imagined being. That is my short answer. I probably give a longer answer after I do a little bit of research into the UK budget. Okay, sake to the oath of the nightly citizen rejectivist. I don't like Trump, but I enjoy watching the left fail thoughts. I enjoy watching the left fail to all the time. The only good thing about election night when Trump won in 2016 was that Hillary lost. I love that Hillary lost. I love to see the left lose. I just don't like seeing the right win. Or the Trump right win. That's the problem. All right, Waldron says, even as a doctor, pulmonologist, my father didn't get respect from anyone. He said, Albanians, no one likes us. Everyone hates us. Oh wow, where was this? This was in America? Albanians were hated in America? I didn't know that. That surprises me. In America, people respect doctors no matter where they come from. All right, I got to run for dinner. You guys made the 650 just came in under the nose, but it's perfect. So thank you for all the superchatters. Thank you generally for all the supporters of the show. Hopefully you enjoyed the show today. You got a little bit of education. I guess you don't have to watch the news now. Everything was explained. If I was wrong about Ukraine and Russia, and it turns out the Ukrainians are going to lose, I will be the first to admit it. I wonder if all my critics that told me from day one that Russia was going to win will ever show up on the chat here and admit they were wrong. Will that ever, ever happen? Daniel Duffy says, an AI painting won an award. What do you think of AI being used for painting and novels? Did it take the fun out of art? I don't think it can create real art. So art has to project values. I mean, they can mimic what real artists do, but they can't create real art. It doesn't surprise me that in a modern world in which we live, people can't differentiate. Maybe even I can't differentiate. But at the end of the day, all the AI can do is mimic. It can't create. And what's important is the creation. All right, thanks Daniel for that final super chat question. Thank you everybody. I'll see you tomorrow. I'm not exactly what time. We'll see how the date pans out, but I will definitely see you tomorrow. Monday, I don't know about a show and then I'm off to Asia. So it's going to be tricky, but we'll see. So thank you for the super chatters. And yeah, see you tomorrow. Bye everybody.


All right, it's time for a first major conversation right here on the breakfast and plus TV Africa. The independent National Electoral Commission, Nigeria's electoral empire, has set aside over three billionaires as budget to defend the results of a February 25 presidential and national assembly election at the March 18 governorship and state assembly polls now so far. Over a hundred election petitions have been filed by grieved candidates and their parties across the country. The presidential candidates offer People's Democratic Party at Tikko Apobakar, a Labour Party, Pitao Bee, the Action Alliance, a Solomon Okangbao, Okanguan rather, allied People's Movement, Chi Chi Ojai have also filed petitions for the nullification of presidential election results in a current March 1. Declare the all-progressive Congress presidential candidate as we all know, Bola Ahmed Tinibu, as the winner of the February 25 presidential election. But the five candidates filed petitions seeking the nullification of the poll, also election petition tribunals in over 12 states have equally received petitions from national assembly candidates who were not satisfied with the results of the just included elections, the states where the petitions had been received include Edo, Plateau, Aplato State, Ondo State, Quarra State, Ogo State, Bayeosa State, Oyo, Oshinu Akiti, Bochi, Lagos and Niger States. And I'm glad to say that we have joining us this morning to discuss this situation Shola Omolaya, who is a public affairs analyst. He joins us with our phone from Akiti State. Shala, good morning to you. It's great to have you again. Good morning and good morning. All right. 3 billion Naira, that's a lot of money. I mean, if you look at the over 300 billion Naira Inaq had on its budget, it is a drop in the ocean. That's about 1%, but it's still a sizable amount of money. Shala, if 3 billion dropped into my account or your account, we know what we'll do, how we'll react. So that's a lot of money. Is this money well spent for Inaq to face all these barrage of cases? We talked about over 100 post-election cases, but before the elections, we had over 600 pre-election cases, post-party primary cases at the courts. Inaq seems to be over home. Would you say that? Well, I think this money, like the Naira man would say, this money they are spending does not call for at all. Do you know what it costs Nigerians to come with this election? The chairman of Inaq gave us a sense of the world's election that will be coming up, meaning that at the end of the election in Qatar, Nigeria will have a very peaceful trust that we don't need to risk. Why? It's like increasing the budget of after-election. Now look at what we experienced in the last election. Same amount of money was spent. They told us all kinds of stories. Petition is equal to cost. I believe that what happened in our state has been a great lesson and lessen the cost of spending so that we are backing on legal matters. But we have legal investors amongst the Inaq who are being paid monthly for what? They have budget for some stationaries that includes that they might want to defend within the judicial premises or outside. We are not there yet. We are talking of three billion Naira in very good terms and in these units or zones if you want to split it. Three to each of some of our leaders are not right thinking. I'm going to think of this. If another person is not coming from the address at the miscarriage, the purpose of diva is to reduce the cost of this legal expenses going to be much more than the proper election. The diva has done this much past in the past. And it knows that there is going to be some of the policies they have set put in place before the election. And money. Why three billion? And many states. They have mentioned that you still have to add those two. You see that one legislative member is going to pass either it's later passed or passed. They are also involved. You can't say that you find one person in a position to pass.  Why that? The electoral law. Because we don't know how this will take place. Most of them will be sworn in the next couple of days. May 29. And all the legislations will be sworn in by June. And we are seeing here the amount of money we are going to spend. Our primary is from each of the parties. The electoral law has forced a guy before the general election. The problem is that there are not so many people. We are just shouting and making noise. We don't need to participate in. The teachers, they didn't check in. No, they just allow it. To say it was almost... You have a group of persons who share a different opinion from what you are saying. And those persons actually think that 300 billionaires is not enough. If you look at the consent, over 100 cases have been filed by politicians. Hello. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can hear you. So I am saying that on the other hand, you have a lot of persons who would not agree with your position this morning as to querying why 3 billionaires should be spent. And so this person is saying, if you look at the number of cases that has been filed, over 100 cases by candidates as well as their political parties across the entire country. 3 billionaires is not enough. That's on the one hand. But also, I'd like to ask you, what do you make of a democracy when you have the courts being at the forefront of it? Very dominant. For me, when it comes to it, we have four. But what I am saying is, why must you start to be spending over 3 billionaires after an election? What was the cost of the election itself? The good department of INEC has always been there. What is your budget every year? Somebody willing to educate me or educate us. On contracts, your contract, okay. It means that whenever you call them on board, they will give you their budget. And if they are not on contract, on what basis they are definitely in. What is the cost of transport at this transport cost? One reason. And let's call one INEC official who is in the purchasing department to say an example from the elementary man. So how much do you get your own freedom? Now or before? This must be possible. If they come to your management and they want to tax gays on your environment and based on your workforce, when it comes to the issue of government or a judge of government, we'll check all of these things out. So if anybody wants to campaign, they can go ahead. And because language, they may say, Nairali, Yolari, and all sorts of things. But let them put this paper. Let them access. Why do you need this money? Last time it was about 2.7 billion. Now it is 3 billion. Why? Then what is the main purpose of development when it comes to this paper? Is it not to reduce the crime in electorate? Is it that the crime is increasing? Or the numbers of voters at the least? Or the total vote tax in general? In this election of the 2321 of February or the 18th of March, let's note, and compare it to the election, the total vote tax of election of 2019. But you told me here, if you put this paper, it's almost 3 billion. This is the best. That was the total vote tax that you said. All right. It is very interesting what you've said. But we can look at the fact that, yes, you talked about the legal department of INEC. They had some reorganization a couple of years ago and they have a legal department which is now standalone. If you do the mathematics, if we say they have more than 100 cases right now post-election cases to attend to, they were looking at over 100 of them, the 3 billion Naira. We want to divide it by, let's just say 110 cases. It amount to 27,272,727 Naira, per case. So we just approximated 27.2 million Naira. When we look at the average cost of hiring a lawyer in Nigeria, sir, I mean, do lawyers get paid per hour? Is this really too much? Because you're looking at how many hours they'll spend at the initial tribunal, from there they go to the Court of Appeal, from there they go to the Supreme Court. So those are three stages. And this is just a budget. INEC may or may not spend the money. So, I mean, 100 cases and more are coming, more are coming. You have to go three levels. And these lawyers have to work. They have how many days with which to dispense of these cases. Is this really too much? Is this really too much? Some lawyers charge per hour in this country and lawyers are not cheap. And then they double their prices when it comes to political cases just like the media. We also have a surcharge when it comes to political admins. Sir. This question is speaking with a laugh. My God, let me come to that.  How do you know? Without the knowledge of your boss? How do you know? You know if you answer, how do you know? You get a budget in preparation to a crime. They need more money. Mr. Molaio, if you're looking at the legal department of INEC, I don't know if they have 100 lawyers. Because looking at, they have a legal office in each of their state offices. I say, maybe we best ask now. I just ask you a question. If you don't have skills, why do you need to start to come to work on the day of work? If you don't come on the day of robbery, because of this, I'm not coming to work. We should begin to open books. I do know that. Yes sir, sorry. Maybe they looked at the last election, how much they spent. They prepared a budget based on that. 2019. Agata, it's a national. It's not one of the three. Let's start with the run-in and see. And we should appreciate that.  We need to go now. My question is, how do they know? Okay, Mr. Molaio, quickly. I see also like us to look at the fact that over time, when people go out to cast their boats, every other election period, we always seem to have the cases in court, where the court would now decide who becomes the president or the governor and what a view and all of that. So again, I put to you, and I'm asking what your thoughts are, where we seem to have the judiciary or the court dominating our democracy. Our nation. Whatever you want to say. For me, one, what is the position that these cases must probably may indicate that INEC didn't perform well in the elections because if they did well, probably they worked with the beavers and all that, like they said, would have had a reduction in number of litigations. But it could be argued that politicians always want to look for. If they can't go in through the door, they're going through the window. If they can't go in through the window, they would like to go in through the roof. So can we blame INEC for politicians and the way they act with all these cases and more to come? All are there to check that you can't go otherwise. If your body did something to check him or not, he would not be trying to work. I'm not saying that's the job or not. The only person you can't do is the uncle, the class monitor. If you are not a man, let me take your solution to the basketball game. These are children. They are not asked to have a residency too. Mr. Alshalaam. Thank you very much. Interesting thoughts. You know, some law firms charge 100 million naira as much as 100 million naira too. I can't hear you. I'm saying some law firms charge as much as 100 million naira for election related cases. I don't know how INEC will go about it. Law Firm A, handle legal state. Law Firm B, handle Aqabu and all that. Let's see how it goes. But the thing I think I all agree on is that this is a season of harvest for the legal community in Nigeria. So the lawyers will really be smiling to the bank at the end of all of this. Hello, sir. Hello, sir. I'm not going to announce that it's to be screened for any election. Thank God. Mr. Alshalaam. We have to go. We have to go. We have to go. Okay. Good morning. All right, sir. We have to go, Mr. Alshalaam. Thank you very much. Sir, thank you so much for your time. You've said it all. Go back to the electoral law he's saying and let's make sure INEC doesn't spend these amounts of money. You know, for a country that... Thank you, Mr. Alshalaam. Actually we have to go for a country that has a lot of debt in serious debt use money judiciously and save money, not waste it. And you also, Kofi, we need to just move on. Yeah, that's cool. Let's go for it. See, I like what you're doing. You see, you should have been saying sometimes just laugh at the way things are done. You know, you organize an election, you spend almost more than one billion dollars and then you don't do it well. Now imagine that you have to do it well so we don't have to get to the point where people are asking that we need to, hey, we're not agreeing. So imagine that we got it right. We have to get it right. So we don't have to get to the point where we have to be defending. It's been, I mean, according to that word, we say being proactive, but that hasn't been the case for us. And you can't stop the people from approaching the court when they feel that the right has been overlooked or discriminated against, whatever it is, however you want to put it, put it at. We just take a break at this point. When we return, we're looking at the second conversation and that'll be briefly the issue of deregulation for subsidy removal according to the Petroleum Industry Act and the fact that petrol might just be selling for 750 nair per litre. This is according to the thoughts of stakeholders. Please stay with us. We'll be right back.