Sott Radio Network

The high school protests in France this week 'converged' with protests against the rising costs of living, resulting in mass street demonstrations in many French cities. The media (and social media) is focusing on the destructive violence and looting committed by a small segment of protesters, thereby portraying the whole movement as 'radical and violent'. This is obviously what the government wan...

As energy prices rise, and inflation and interest rates along with them, the Western world is anxious for good news regarding an end to the US stand-off against Iran, and the Russia-Ukraine-NATO war. So when Trump announced a surprising breakthrough on Friday - the US importing shipments of Russian diesel in exchange for the lifting of (some) sanctions on Russia, the markets responded favorably. L...

This week's high-school protests in France against cuts to education funding, while not imminently heralding 'the fall of France', do indicate enormous budgetary strain due to the energy crisis and the redirection of funding towards military procurement. Similarly, protests in Spain against rising house prices and rents expose the downside to encouraging mass immigration to solve Europe's demograp...

A grand 'peaceful summit' in Washington with Xi Jinping which extended the 'US-China trade war truce', more claims from Trump that Iran 'wants to make a deal', a 'settlement' between the US and Denmark over the future of Greenland, no US intervention on Saudi Arabia's side against Yemen's Houthis, and German officials meeting their Russian counterparts for the first time in almost 5 years of the R...

25 years since 9/11 - "the day that changed the world" - the world has indeed changed, but in whose image? Or according to which designs? Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in July 2006 that we were witnessing the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" toward a pro-Western regional order. But here we are 2 decades later, and the region is decidedly less pro-Western than it was before...

Well, they're back at it again. The US and Iran last week conducted another round of strikes and counter-strikes, their first since mid-July. This time Iran claims to have targeted with ballistic missiles (and successfully damaged) a US Navy destroyer and aircraft carrier - presumably the USS George Washington. CENTCOM denied they were hit, but acknowledged the attempt, and obliterated 3 laden Ira...

5 years after its ignominious departure from Afghanistan, 4 years after baiting Russia into Ukraine, and 3 years after 'partnering' with Israel's '7-front war', the United States finds itself in a quagmire. Brought into focus by its inability to enforce its will against Iran, the empire's usual methods for maintaining the 'exorbitant privilege' of the US dollar on the world stage are no longer wor...

The lack of any progress towards achieving its goals in Iran, and the pathetic attempts to paper over this fact by claiming that their goals have been achieved, is leaving the US regime badly exposed to the key factor that has sustained its position as the global hegemon: its reputation for always getting its way, be it in military or financial terms. As the weeks became months of indecision over...

Yes, 'only' 5 times, even though it seems like most weeks since April has seen Trump flip from extreme aggression towards Iran back into a 'man of peace'. Last week he again threatened 'massive bombardment' only to revert to his tired claim that Iran and other Gulf countries 'called at the last minute and desperately want a deal'. Besides the fact that, the longer this goes on, the more the US wil...

Between the oil, gas, fertilizers, and other feedstocks not making it past a Strait of Hormuz now effectively closed for 5 months, along with the oil, gas, fertilizers and grain not making it out of both Russia and Ukraine's ports and into global markets, is a global economic crash headed our way? Does the West's leadership class understand how close this is? More to the point, do they care? Runni...

Barely 3 weeks old, the 'Memorandum of Understanding' between the US and Iran appears to have come to an end. The US military is targeting Iranian military and civilian sites daily, while Iran is attacking US bases and other assets across the Middle East. That this is occurring at the same time that Russia's energy exports suffer significantly due to 'Ukrainian' drone waves means the immediate, sh...

Two high-profile deaths of politicians in three days - one in the US and one in the UK - has the internet guessing as to what happened to US Senator Lindsey Graham, along with former Tory and British Reform party member Ann Widdecombe. Graham dropped dead 'after returning from his 10th visit to Ukraine', and Widdecombe was brutally murdered in her home and the suspect(s) is at large. The latter wa...

On this episode we discuss Dr. Karen Mitchell's new book Human Predators and her research on harmful people across settings such as business, law, medicine, media, religion, and politics. She argues that predators outside prison are common, often act covertly through emotional and social abuse, and share similar traits and tactics regardless of labels like narcissist or psychopath. We also discuss...

On the surface, the USA is thriving and a "light unto the world", as Trump recited in his speeches marking the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776. But is this 'national mythos' still valid? Was it ever? Does the US live up to its claims of uniqueness with respect to 'freedom' and 'democracy'? If not, what is this exceptional nation's 'chief feature'? Excess? B...

One week into the 'Peace Deal', the US and Iran are back to taking potshots at each other - both online and ballistically - over control of shipping through the strait of Hormuz. And, for all their recent criticism of Israel, US leaders this week gave Netanyahu something of a 'win' in Lebanon: a crooked deal between them and the official Lebanese leadership that sees the IDF withdraw from most of...

So Trump and Iran's president have at last come to terms, jointly signing a Memorandum of Understanding that 'solidifies', if that's not too strong a word, the de facto ceasefire between the US and Iran that stretches back some 16 weeks. It's the shakiest of peace deals, not least because key issues like charging shipping tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz have been 'kicked down the ro...

The seemingly endless 'negotiations' between the Trump White House and Tehran made a breakthrough last week, when, for the first time since the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, Iranian leaders signalled that a preliminary 'peace deal' is indeed within reach... until Israel nixed it by launching airstrikes into downtown Beirut. In the meantime the World Cup is underway, and the US, as on...

Ukraine's drone waves continue hitting Russia, last week targeting St Petersburg right as its annual 'Russian Davos' forum opened, Azerbaijani grain ships in the Sea of Azov, and the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye. The Ukrainian puppet regime, egged on as ever by the Western Consortium that runs it, is feeling invincible, but its days are surely numbered. Meanwhile the American side of the 'US-...

The US government continues dragging out terms of settlement with Iran, Israel continues invading, occupying and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon and Gaza, and the Trump White House continues playing 'MAGA Greatest Hits' to its base. Their detachment from reality is becoming more palpable - and unsustainable, surely? - by the day... Running Time: 01:40:15 Download: MP3 — 138 MB

Another 'TACO Tuesday' came and went... by Thursday the US military was again 'locked and loaded' for another go at Iran... and by Saturday evening Trump was dangling another peace deal - 'for realz this time'. As American diplomacy erratically yo-yo's, in the real world, some oil tankers are once more sailing the Strait of Hormuz, but now on Iran's terms. War is a cynical business, a 'racket', as...

Deferred due to the US-Israeli war against Iran, Trump finally visited China last week, where he received an apparently 'warm' welcome from Xi Jinping, along with a stern warning: do not mess with Taiwan, and let us work to avoid the 'Thucydides Trap', wherein a dominant power inevitably wars with a rising power. Whether Trump understood the finer points of Chinese diplomacy is unclear, but it's c...

Caught in a trap by Iran, the gulf between what US president Trump wishes were true, and what is actually real, continues to grow. While the Strait of Hormuz remains impassable to the US Navy, its distant "blockade of Iran's blockade" is apparently taking effect, with billions of dollars' worth of oil shipments failing to leave Iran and thus reducing the country's cash flows. Iranian officials rem...

Typically, the American president has blurted out 'the plain truth' about what his government is doing around the world - from the Caribbean to the Arctic to the Black Sea and Indian Ocean: behaving like pirates. This week we review, taking into account Richard Medhurst's excellent dot-connecting in his documentary 'The Petrogas-Dollar: The Secret US Strategy Behind the Iran War', the string of US...

Three aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea for the first time since March 2003 suggests another 'shock and awe' campaign is being considered. The 'ceasefire' between the US and Iran is holding, but for how much longer? Trump talks up his 'blockade of their blockade', but it's clear what is suffering most from Iranian defiance - Trump's reputation and American 'prestige', which the Americans are it...

It's not easy to do, and it's tempting to just 'turn it off', but we're all unfortunately doomed to have to endure Trump's erratic statements on Iran and wider geopolitics for the duration of this crisis (which he himself caused). For now a tentative ceasefire is holding, and further talks are scheduled in Pakistan this week, but from one hour to the next no one can tell which way things will go:...