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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 demographic crisis: without large inward migration, there would be no housing crisis. Earlier this...

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 Russia-Ukraine War... One could be forgiven for thinking that 'world war' is making way for...

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 9/11. Has Al-Qaeda won?! Osama bin Laden's 1996 fatwa sought to "expel the polytheists [US...

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 Iranian oil tankers as 'punishment'. While this situation remains very tense, and occasionally...

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 working. Its rusty and fault-prone aircraft carriers find they no longer have safe harbor in the...

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 "what to do to force Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz," it's increasingly clear that we have...

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 will have to accept the new reality that its dreams of global hegemony are over, the burning...

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? Running Time: 01:37:09 Download: MP3 — 89 MB

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, short-term winner is... American energy companies. Trump wants this of course, and is mindful of...

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 was a rare voice of reason in British politics, but the former most certainly will not be missed...

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 her view that the DSM can blur distinctions between predators and traumatized victims,...

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? By extreme contrast, the country the US arguably just lost a war against, Iran, is undergoing...

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 southern Lebanon, but permits it indefinite occupation of two 'security pockets', ostensibly to...

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 road' for two months, but most are surprised to see the US accept the first of the document's 14...

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 one of the host countries, understands that the importance of 'summer games' to the masses means...