Robert Barnes: Washington Is Dismantling Its Own Empire One War at a Time

Attorney and political commentator (and former Trump lawyer) Robert Barnes joins former CIA analyst Larry Johnson to examine how the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the weaponization of the dollar and a succession of strategic miscalculations are reshaping the international order. 

From the growing alignment of Russia, China and Iran to mounting pressure on U.S. markets and domestic politics, they ask whether the system built to preserve American primacy has begun to work against itself. 

Barnes runs thru lots of history where the US worked with the mafia, drug lords, terrorists, Nazis and other similar gangster types in the Post WW2 era. 

Barnes also breaks down the current ramifications of increasing cost of fuels and the impacts on the economy. Farm clients of his are going out of business. Big box stores like Wal-Mart are facing serious layoffs due to the public not spending for the expensive luxury home items. 

He predicts the Dems will take back the House of Representatives in the Congress and in the Senate he predicts the Dems could take a slight advantage.

Having once represented Trump as his lawyer, Barnes also breaks down the current mental gymnastics that the Orange Man Bad is going thru each day.

Bruce

History lesson: WW2 Japan's invasions/occupations being rewritten

Jerry Grey is a retired British police supervisor who has been living in China for almost two decades. 

Here he exposes Wikipedia and other Western sources falsely denying Japan's invasions of Asian countries during WW2. 

CIA trip to Moscow, Zelensky casts blame for bombed weapons storage near homes

• The gap between America’s inability to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and its claim to own it is greater than the 7,000-mile distance between Washington and the Strait itself. Welcome to the post-American order in the Persian Gulf. 

• Strategic Culture Foundation: Before CIA head Ratcliffe’s departure, the US asked Ukraine to suspend drone and missile attacks on Moscow and cities in northern Russia from last Monday through Wednesday. Kiev was informed that a high-level American delegation was traveling through Russian territory. The US initiative portrays a position of weakness. A hegemonic power that perceives the erosion of its centrality has an interest in freezing open fronts in order to reorganize its lines. Strategic overextension is the classic ailment of mature empires. The decisive question is not whether the US is on its last legs, but rather whether it perceives that it can no longer sustain all fronts at once. Russian distrust of Western overtures is a well-established historical fact, and no negotiator from Moscow sits at the table without factoring in the possibility of deception. The other major issue, one of international calibration, is Israel which comes into play as a function of the Iranian question: Israeli security is the unspoken prerequisite for any American recalibration in the Middle East. The only thing that can be said with certainty is this: when the CIA director flies to Moscow in secret something significant is stirring beneath the surface of the conflicts. An inside source reported that another prominent figure was also present on the plane and in Moscow – namely, Vice President JD Vance. 

• Simplicius: It appears more and more likely that the CIA director’s true mission to Moscow was essentially an attempt to stop Russia from finishing off Ukraine. There are multiple possibilities for how this could have worked. One of them is that he carried with him an implied threat of European [NATO] escalation. By warning Russia not to escalate against Europe, he may have instead dropped the obvious hint that Russia itself would be forced into a European escalation if Russia does not back its foot off the gas on Ukrainian strikes.

• Greece and Israel are set to sign agreements next week in Tel Aviv launching the 'Achilles’ Shield', a multibillion-euro air defense project that Greek officials call a major step in modernizing the country’s defenses. The agreements will be signed on August 31 by Greece’s General Directorate for Defense Investments & Armaments and Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Once signed, the contracts will start a 35-month countdown to complete the project. The project is expected to cost a total of 3.1 billion euros. Twelve Greek companies are expected to take part, carrying out work valued at more than 700 million euros.

• RT: Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly humiliated and abused a former household worker, at one point calling him an “undeveloped Moroccan,” a new lawsuit claims. The controversy adds to a years-long trail of remarkably similar allegations, painting a picture of intolerable conditions at the residence. According to Ben-Hamo, he sometimes worked from around 7:30 AM until the early hours of the following morning, clocking 60 to 80 hours of overtime a month. He claims to have “suffered extreme abuse” from the prime minister’s wife and endured screaming and humiliation when cleaning or household chores were not performed exactly as she wanted.

• Russia's Volna Kupol Garant appears to be the electronic warfare system responsible for the declining effectiveness of Starlink - a development Ukrainian military officials have begun to openly admit, notes air defense historian Yuri Knutov in comments to Sputnik. Unlike conventional jamming, which focuses on terminals, the system targets the frequencies used by Starlink satellites, the backbone of Ukrainian command and control, the expert says. “The Starlink signal can be completely jammed - or distorted badly enough to make it unusable also for communications,” says Knutov.

• External governance in Kyiv under the auspices of the UN could pave the way for a diplomatic settlement. This was stated on August 29 in an interview with RIA Novosti by Mikhail Galuzin, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister. He reminded that President Vladimir Putin had previously proposed introducing temporary external administration in Ukraine under the auspices of the UN, the US, European countries, and Russian partners in order to hold elections for the Ukrainian top leadership. According to Putin, Russia could already be conducting negotiations to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.
• Former Ukrainian Defence Minister and terrorist, Mikhail Fedorov, has accepted a role as defence innovation adviser to Italy’s Guido Crosetto (Minister of Defence of Italy). Fedorov says he will help Italy adopt modern warfare technologies, including drones, autonomous systems and air defense, while continuing his main work in Ukraine. 

• Sputnik: Russian Armed Forces struck the Fire Point enterprise in the Kiev region, which produced and stored substances for solid-fuel boosters and warheads of Flamingo missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.  Last night Kiev was hit with another massive attack, which resulted in the explosion (and secondary detonations) of a weapons depot with US Patriot missiles inside placed right next to a civilian area. 37 residents died. Surprisingly Zelensky acknowledged their error: "A terrible situation and terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people. Another such crime, after what happened in Vyshneve, is absolutely unacceptable. I expect the details to be presented to the public promptly. The first strike was on an Defense Forces ammunition storage site that definitely shouldn’t have been there. Shells, mines, other ammunition, and drones detonated. The scale is significant. We have already spoken with the Prosecutor General, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Commander-in-Chief – they have everything necessary for the investigation. I want to separately thank everyone who is there on the ground and at other sites of Russian strikes, doing everything possible to help and save people."  

• Trump has announced the creation of a 'Space Academy', like the Army's West Point, or the Navy's Annapolis. “Given the rapid growth of the Space Force and the commerce space industry and the expansion of our ambitions to the moon and far beyond the moon, it’s clear we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers and civil operators.” At the announcement he stated that we are winning the recent wars "because we get so much information from space". The only question now is where the 'academy' will be located. The announcement of a new military academy came days after the Trump administration released a space policy increasing the number of rocket launches into space. The president has long touted what he calls the “golden age” of space travel, seeking to double the Space Force’s budget to stay ahead of China in the battle for satellite supremacy. When the Space Force was created in 2020, the top general in charge told the Congress that it would be a 'lean' organization. Lately though the Space Force is begging for big budget increases "because they are being asked to do so many new military operations".  “Our nation will conquer [space], indeed, this vast frontier that we have before us,” Trump said. “We will explore it, tame it and we will win it.”  

• MSN: The US has gained a controlling stake in nearly a quarter of Venezuela’s untapped oil reserves. It makes the US the majority owner of a giant new joint venture oil company that will hold 100-year contracts at the Venezuelan oil fields. The key Venezuelan partner in the deal is Alejandro Betancourt, who controls the second-largest private oil company in the country. Betancourt, 46, has also been the subject of investigations in multiple countries into alleged money laundering and faces a Swiss warrant for his arrest. Trump said the Venezuela deal “will substantially lower gas prices for all Americans,” although most experts say that any real increase in Venezuelan oil production is years away. Trump also claimed the deal would come at no cost to US taxpayers. It is unclear who would make the tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure investments needed before oil can be pumped from the largely dormant fields. Major oil companies have mostly seen such spending as too risky.
• A Native tribe’s way of life was threatened by Trump's Canada tariffs. The Blackfeet Nation (Montana) faces severe economic hardship as international trade tensions escalate. Native American business owners, including ranchers, transportation operators, and tourism industry, have experienced substantial revenue declines over the past two years due to existing tariff policies. With new trade disputes on the horizon, tribal communities fear further deterioration of their already vulnerable economic situation and limited employment opportunities.

• Safe Tech Int'l: For decades, Big Tech has exploited us and shredded the fabric of our society under the guise of progress. Its platforms have enabled genocide, fueled suicides, and laid waste to our collective mental health, and now, with artificial intelligence, it also wants to take our jobs. Politicians smarter than Trump are abruptly flip-flopping on the issue. Texas has 582 data centers that are either operating or planned to be built. Texas Republican governor, Greg Abbott, is touting the planned buildout of data centers, calling the state the “epicenter of AI development.” America is sick of Big Tech running roughshod over society. Polls show that 1/2 of Americans want tech executives to have less power, and that 3/4 say social media’s negative effect on children’s development is a serious problem. Data centers aren’t much different—other than they are physical and local manifestations of Big Tech’s excess.  

Navy mess: GI's wanting to quit & moral conflict from the wars

Current reasons for wanting out of US military: Violations of international law; civilian death tolls as result of US interventions; and extended deployments without a clear mission or strategy.

A New York Times headline reads: 'Hegseth's Purge of Top Generals Leaves the Army Rudderless'.

The shit is hitting the fan in DC even if the big wigs want to deny it.

This surging anti-military attitude within the services (similar to during the US war on Vietnam) is likely the reason Trump & Bessent have switched gears to their 'economic war on Iran'. 

Don't expect much from this latest twist in strategy.

The only 'winners' are the corporate war mongers who are raking in the taxpayers cash. 

In the meantime Trump is slashing funding for the pre-school Head Start program for poor kids. Trump wants to dump Medicare and Medicaid programs onto the states to cover - which they can't afford to do.

The Veterans Administration is being slowly but steadily privatized. The Post Office is being run into the ground in order to justify privatization.

National parks and forests are continually being sliced and diced. 

Next up we will likely see states and local governments complaining they don't have the funds to fix sewer and water systems. They will get privatized and our rates will skyrocket. 

The total breakdown of America is on the way. 

Speak out now or forever regret your choice to sit this revolution out.

Bruce 

Sunday song

Why Fast Food Targets Black Communities

From redlining to food deserts — the systematic targeting of Black communities with processed food, junk food advertising, and fast food wasn't accidental. It was a deliberate business strategy borrowed directly from the tobacco industry playbook.

In this video we follow the money — exposing how corporations built billion dollar empires on the backs of Black health and what the true economic cost is to Black families today. 

the funnies

That's how they think. Zapp Branningan - Chief of NATO General Staff 

Trump threatens world on Iran economic sanctions

• Qatar government spokesperson reacts to US sanctions on Iran and says they are unilateral and says Qatar supports mediation efforts to resolve issues. Qatar seems to have reacted soft enough to not upset the US while also showing Iran that it’s pro-mediation and does not support the sanctions.

• Tasnim News: IRGC spokesperson says if the US does not accept Iran’s conditions, the Strait of Hormoz will under no circumstances be reopened. Strait of Hormoz belongs to Iran & Oman. Negotiations with Oman have reached outcomes accepted by both sides. In the negotiations, agreements were reached regarding each country’s share of the strait’s waters, as well as Iran’s and Oman’s respective shares of the revenues generated from it.
• NBC News: Iranian missile and drone attacks have caused "unprecedented damage" to US intelligence facilities and surveillance equipment in the Middle East. Sources say the scale of the destruction exceeds any damage previously inflicted on US intelligence agencies. They predict that repairs and restoration will cost billions of dollars. According to the outlet's sources, some of the affected US facilities are located in Iraq.

• USS George Washington aircraft carrier arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility yesterday, the combatant command announced. The carrier, which was accompanied by cruiser USS Robert Smalls and destroyer USS Shoup, transited the Arabian Sea. It is not clear how close GW is to the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group. The George Washington Carrier Strike Group is expected to relieve the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, but a Navy official could not say when USS Abraham Lincoln when it would head home. It could take a month or longer for Lincoln to travel back to the US West Coast. The GW CSG headed from the Indo-Pacific to CENTCOM  last week, after families and sailors raised concerns about the quality of life aboard Abe, which has gone 252 days without a port call. So far, Abe has been deployed for 272 days, according to USNI News carrier deployment database.

• Qatar’s LNG exports have fallen by 98%. According to Reuters, Qatar’s LNG exports have plunged sharply due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with the decline reaching around 99%.  Qatar has so far lost approximately $24 billion in gas sales revenue.
• Colonial Israeli settlers blocked the road near the Karm Abu Salem crossing preventing trucks carrying humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza. The protest was held in opposition to plans to deploy an international stabilization force in Gaza and begin reconstruction efforts. The crossing is a key entry point for humanitarian supplies into the Strip, where aid access remains severely constrained. 

• When G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs soon gather in North Carolina, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to push a broad agenda: stronger growth, more resilient supply chains, lower global imbalances and action on mounting sovereign debt. However, behind the official narrative lies a political demand – the US wants the G20 to help squeeze Iran, Reuters cites a senior Treasury official as saying.  Bessent will reportedly deliver a “strong statement” to G20 officials, warning that countries maintaining business ties with Iran could face secondary US sanctions. 

• The Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli defense companies have directed millions in unreported funding to US university research programs for weapons development, sponsoring research directly or serving as the pass-through entity for the funding, a Drop Site investigation has found. A sample of state and university audits, foreign-funding disclosures, and other institutional records identified millions of dollars in financial ties over the last two decades between the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MOD), Israeli weapons manufacturers, and American universities. Records dating from 2004 to 2025 point to a large number of schools that have had financial relationships with the Israeli MOD or Israeli weapons manufacturers, including Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, Texas Tech, the University of Connecticut, the University of Tennessee, the University of Maryland, the University of Florida, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Rhode Island, the University of New Mexico, the Washington University in St. Louis, and the State University of New York. 

• Stars & Stripes: More than 75,000 women are part of the Ukrainian armed forces as of early 2026, with about 5,500 in combat roles, according to the defense ministry. They account for less than 10% of active-duty personnel, but their numbers have increased by about 40% since before the war. They enlist by choice. The rise of drone warfare is making gender less of a factor on the battlefield.  

• “The West has for centuries sought to create new flashpoints along Russia’s borders. Its preferred tactic is to work through others, drawing nations with historical ties to Russia into confrontation with Moscow,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Yuzhnaya Ossetia newspaper.
• Canada will impose tariffs of up to 50% on about 700 U.S. products starting Sept. 8, retaliating after trade talks collapsed and the US raised tariffs on Canadian goods. Steel and aluminum will face 50% tariffs, while cars remain at 25%. The measures cover roughly $20 billion in US imports.
• At one stage in the current US administration JD Vance was held out as possibly one with some sense. That is fast disappearing with comments such as this: US Vice President JD Vance says Canada would be vulnerable to foreign invasion without Washington’s protection, as the two countries are locked in trade tensions.
• The Ukrainian Nazis attacked a bus traveling from Lisichansk to Stakhanov in Lugansk People’s Republic of Russia, carrying 15 people, Leonid Pasechnik, head of the LPR, announced. As a result 9 people were killed. 

• Italy has secretly coordinated a new package of military assistance for Kiev. While officially Rome announced only the supply of generators, according to Repubblica, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government agreed weeks ago on a large-scale arms package.
• Euronews: France is pushing to limit Ukraine's ability to buy non-European military equipment with EU loan money, seeking to steer the €60 billion defence portion of the EU's €90 billion support package toward European and French producers. France has a clear commercial interest: its Franco-Italian SAMP/T system is Europe's closest alternative to the US Patriot 'missile defense' system.

• Elon Musk becomes the latest Nazi decorated by the Zelensky regime. In honoring Musk, a committed ideological fascist and a leading promoter of the global far-right movement, the Zelensky regime is once again exposing the fraud of those who claim that Ukraine is fighting for "democracy."
• The Ukrainian Nazis struck the Donetsk City shopping and entertainment centre in Donetsk People's Republic in Russia. The terrorist attack was carried out with British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG long-range air-launched cruise missiles. The number of casualties from the strike has risen to eight, including a child and a teenager. 

• Havana, Cuba: Organizations and social movements from across the Americas, meeting in Havana August 15–17 under the Campaign for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas, issued a Declaration of a Zone of Peace centered on the defense of Cuba. They denounced the tightened US economic, commercial, financial, and energy blockade, executive orders extending its extraterritorial reach, and an open regime-change operation against the island. Cuba is living through one of the most difficult periods in history. The declaration also marks 12 years since CELAC proclaimed the region a Zone of Peace. Three priorities were agreed upon: Defend Cuba and its revolution against imperialist war; Expel foreign military bases and occupation troops; Fight for the liberation of all occupied territories and for self-determination across the Caribbean.
• Matt Bivens, M.D. on busifikatsiya: Among the men hiding from the Ukraine [proxy war on Russia] include not just those who fled Ukraine, but the millions who couldn’t or wouldn’t. Those men lie low. Many of them loathe the CIA-backed, right-wing, ethno-nationalist dictatorship that rules their country now. All of them watch fearfully for the unmarked cars with tinted windows, the SUVs, vans and buses, that prowl the streets of nearly every town, filled with men ready to jump out, tackle them, and frogmarch them off to war. There’s a slang term in Ukrainian for being snatched off of the street by the military: busifikatsiya, or “bus-ification”. It captures the idea of being violently shoved into a bus and driven off to a likely death. Citizen resistance doesn’t always fail. Occasionally, Ukrainian crowds have managed to flip over busifikatsiya vehicles, or to otherwise help a young man wriggle free and run away. In sadder cases, men have jumped off bridges or out of third-floor windows to their deaths rather than be conscripted; or, upon arrival to the recruitment centers, have slit their wrists or hung themselves with their belts; or have stabbed to death the doctor who just medically cleared them for service.  Democrats and Republicans [in the US] nevertheless want Ukrainians to sacrifice their teenagers. “I can confirm it: American politicians from both parties are putting pressure on President Zelensky to explain why there is no mobilization of those aged 18-25 in Ukraine,” wrote Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to the president’s chief of staff. “If we simply mobilize all young men aged 18-25,” says Leshchenko, “we will destroy the very future of our state, an entire generation.”  

Congress Profits While Nepal Pays The Price

Lip service will not halt the flood of climate change catastrophes

By Lisa Savage

As the death toll from the glacier collapse that flooded Nepal reaches 1,300+ souls, let us pause to examine the causes of this “unprecedented” effect. Unprecedented in part because early warning systems for flash floods in the China border region adjacent to the disaster zone appear to have failed. But also because a flash flood that looked like a three-story high tsunami is the poster child for galloping climate change in 2026.  

Remember when liberal Democrats joined 350.org to insist that “the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere considered the safe limit to avoid the worst impacts of climate change”? We are currently at 425.40 ppm. Successive warmongering Democratic administrations and congresses mouthed words to show support for the goal but continued funding the military which contributes most of any organization on Earth. Put another way, the fossil fuel consumption of the Pentagon (never mind its contractors) exceeds that of Nepal and 100+ other NATIONS.

Why did the Dems keep doing this? Profits, of course. Their stock portfolios are bulging as Nepalese families are buried in torrents of mud.

The more overtly fascistic of the U.S. corporate duopoly meanwhile will be highlighted as the climate villains. Can’t both things be true at once? 

Link to article in The Guardian, a neoliberal rag that helps media outlets like the NYT and CNN bash Republicans

So vote blue no matter who! And pretend you’re doing something about the human race hurtling toward extinction — while your party continues the U.S. proxy war on Russia via Ukraine. [And the Iran war too.] Oops, today that would be Republicans.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. 

How US-Israel meddled in Colombia's election

Colombia's former President Gustavo Petro formally accused the USA and Israel of meddling in his country's election to put in power new far-right leader Abelardo de la Espriella, a US citizen and Trump ally who worked as a lawyer for years in Miami, Florida, defending drug traffickers. 

Ben Norton explains.