the funnies

Trump: Iran is broke (or is the U.S. the broken nation?)

• Former Mossad chief was just handed full control of one of the biggest U.S. defense tech companies. David Barnea completed his term as Mossad director on June 2, 2026. On August 3 he was appointed Global President and Chairman of Ondas Defense Ltd., the defense division of Nasdaq-listed U.S. firm Ondas Inc., which develops autonomous systems, drones, counter-UAS, and AI-enabled multi-domain defense platforms.  

• The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance-strike drones since the start of the war with Yemen and Iran. The cost of the lost aircraft may exceed $1.3 billion. Before the conflict began, the U.S. Armed Forces had approximately 185 such drones.

• Yemen military: Yemen appreciates Russia's stance in the UN Security Council in condemning the strikes on Sanaa Airport by Saudi Arabia, as it called for lifting the complete siege on Yemen by Al Saud.
• By Jonathan Cook @ Consortium News: We are on the brink of a series of catastrophes of our own making that humankind will be exceptionally lucky to survive. There is a path ahead, but being able to see it and where it leads will require — at least from most Westerners — a difficult feat of imagination. We will need to cast aside many of the things we have been taught to most closely identify with. It will demand of us a realisation that our most cherished values are actually harmful. The West has only been superficially democratic — in the sense that everyone gets a vote — for the last century or so. Even then, democracy has been highly restricted and controlled: the public usually gets a choice between two capitalist parties, one more extreme than the other, following a lifetime of exposure to opinions crafted for them by the ultimate beneficiaries of capitalism — the billionaires who own the mass media. The ruling class understands the tide is turning. The world’s resources are finite and running out. Capitalism’s model of mass consumption can only hasten the end. Consumption pollutes the planet. It fuels climate chaos. It decimates other species that sustain a living planet. If individualism is shown to bring only ruin, we are likely to prefer collective ideologies. If greed brings only death, we are likely to prefer cooperation and solidarity. Hope of salvation resides not in iPhones and jeans but in the resurrection of the commons — of public good, of shared wealth.
• By Nate Bear The Elaborate Fairy-Tales Justifying The War In Ukraine: It appears that a significant number of people who support the Ukraine war understand that in every other part of the world the US is a self-interested empire using its military power and hegemonic status to assert its influence for geostrategic and political ends. But in Ukraine, apparently, this isn’t the case. In Ukraine the US has shed its imperial ambitions and is merely helping a scrappy little upstart in a fight against its big bully neighbour. In this telling of events, it is Russia which is the imperial power, with the US playing the role of good global citizen. This to me is incomprehensibly fractured logic resting on a seemingly sincere belief that the US can pursue selfless policy in one part of the world because it is a benign empire, but pursues selfish war in another part of the world because it is a malign empire. A truly baffling and incoherent analysis. In 2008, in a conversation with John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, Tony Blair said western strategy “should be to make Russia a little desperate with our activities in areas bordering on what Russia considers its sphere of interest and along its actual borders.” This meeting came just 10 days before the 2008 Budapest summit where the west affirmed that Ukraine and Georgia “will become” NATO members. Those who support this war until the last Ukrainian are the elites in Ukraine, Europe and the US whose husbands, fathers, sons and brothers are not being sent to die an ignominious death. Those who indulge in double-standards, false equivalences and fairy-tale narratives do so to avoid the painful unravelling of their cognitive dissonance. And those who make peace impossible make war inevitable.

• SpaceNews: The Pentagon’s push to replenish missile inventories is creating an opening for a new class of manufacturers that say the problem isn’t simply a shortage of factory space. It is how those factories are built. Startups such as Machina, Hadrian and Freeform are applying software, robotics and highly automated production techniques to aerospace and defense manufacturing, challenging a model that has long relied on dedicated machinery, specialized tooling and skilled labor to make relatively small numbers of complex parts. Lockheed is also an investor in Machina through Lockheed Martin Ventures. 

• It would be wise to recall that during the 2003 'Shock & Awe' US attack on Iraq, then Naval War College instructor Thomas Barnett's new book 'Pentagon's New Map' was published stating that 'America's role in the world will be security export'. He said we won't make cars, TVs, shoes, etc. Our role will be to make weapons and wage endless war to secure the parts of the world not yet under US-NATO control. He called it the 'non-integrating gap'. Iran, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq, Southern Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China and the African continent all fit these days into that plan. He stated these wars would enable corporate globalization of the world economy. We are still in that place today.  
• Historic Foreign Policy Speech at American University in Washington DC on June 10, 1963 by President John F. Kennedy: JFK was killed in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Compare JFK's words with those of Donald Trump these days.

Disappointment grows with Delcy in Venezuela

• 106 demonstrations were recently organized across Greece against the genocide of Palestinians and growing Israeli takeover of the Greek economy, the military, and thousands of acres of prime real estate. Above a photo from the protest at the utmost southern tiny island of Gavdos. 
• Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is increasingly involved in key decision making in Iran, growing into the position of his martyred father. He has consolidated his authority by meeting with various high-ranking officials in recent days, including President Pezeshkian and others that have not been disclosed. His physical state has been described as ‘excellent’ (despite western media rumors) and those who have met him say he is involved, diligent, and assertive when necessary. 

• President Trump: ‘The Iranians tried to assassinate me, so I was transported in a food truck’. Sovereignista says this needs a rewrite: President Trump: 'The Israelis told us of a planned assassination attempt on my life by Iran, and so I was hidden in a food truck and taken off to another airplane, while all of my press and other leaders had to take the airplane that was supposedly threatened.' [This was likely another US-Israel psyop designed to ramp-up the fear and hatred of Iran. And also maybe to keep the USS Abe Lincoln aircraft carrier mutiny off the front pages. But it didn't work.]

• Trump desperate to remain “in control”, was spotted casually teeing off in Bedminster, New Jersey with a full-on AN/TWQ-1 Avenger mobile anti-air system armed with Stinger missiles escorting him around the golf course. For weeks, Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal. But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in US payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the US naval blockade, among other things.  

• Taybeh, close to Ramallah, has been declared a “closed military zone” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after months of repeated attacks by Israeli settlers. 

• Center for Constitutional Rights: The University of Minnesota has paid Israeli-American scholar Raz Segal $250,000 as compensation for rescinding its job offer to head the school’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 2024. Internal documents confirm that the University’s revocation was based on Dr. Segal’s First Amendment-protected speech under pressure from donors who objected to his criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza. “The attack against me by these donors presented a world turned upside down: my commitment, as a Jewish scholar of the Holocaust and the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, to stopping a livestreamed genocide in front of our eyes posed, in their minds, a threat to Jews,” said Prof. Segal.

• Kovel, Volyn region of Ukraine: The TCC body snatchers found fresh meat to die for Zelensky. The kid tried to stop his father's death sentence by throwing a toy at the meat hunters, but alas to no avail. 

• China has signaled it will retaliate if the US imposes secondary tariffs over purchases of Russian oil. Liu Chang, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said passage of the US “hell sanctions” bill would backfire on Washington itself. “The use of double standards, as well as coercive and pressure tactics, will ultimately backfire on those who employ them,” Liu Chang stated.

• Defend Democracy Press: Cuba has long struggled under the economic restrictions imposed by the US. But experts say the Trump administration has heightened those pressures, pushing Cuba’s healthcare system to the brink. “Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines,” United Nations human rights commissioner Volker Turk said last month as he called for sanctions relief. “This is unacceptable.” For more than 60 years, Cuba has operated under a comprehensive US trade embargo, the longest in modern history. Rooted in Cold War political rivalries, the embargo has hindered Cuba from accessing medicines and equipment available to much of the world. Cuba is banned, for example, from buying advanced US-made pharmaceuticals and technology in which more than 10 percent of the components originate in the US. According to Cuban officials, European medical suppliers frequently refuse to trade with the island out of fear of US sanctions. 

• In an arrangement described to TIME by three senior US and Venezuelan officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio supervises the framework governing Venezuela’s oil revenues and public finances, effectively administering a joint fund that gives Washington influence over everything from how the country’s export earnings are allocated to the reopening of the energy sector to preferential treatment for American companies. Rubio and Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela, are in near daily contact through phone calls and WhatsApp messages, officials say. Rodríguez consults him on domestic appointments, including her selection of a Defense Minister, according to three officials familiar with the arrangement. “Basically, you have what they call the Rodrígato operating,” says James Story, a former US ambassador to Venezuela under Presidents Trump and Biden, describing an arrangement in which Rodríguez’s government remains in power while carrying out Washington’s strategic priorities. “They are doing everything that we ask them to do.” Israel and Venezuela have announced that they had renewed consular relations 17 years after Caracas severed diplomatic ties with Israel when Tel Aviv invaded besieged Gaza in 2008-2009. 

• A newly updated 2026 report from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology exposes that US immigration authorities are abusing immigration powers to launch a nationwide mass DNA surveillance program, violating  constitutional rules and global human rights of migrants, vulnerable groups and even American citizens. The research builds on the institution’s 2024 two-year probe and dismantles the federal government’s long deceptive excuse for mass DNA collection. For years, DHS, ICE and CBP claimed mandatory DNA sampling only served migrant identity verification for immigration management, citing the limited Maryland v. King Supreme Court ruling. However, an internal 2025 ICE legal email confirmed the real core goal: building a national criminal DNA database to solve general crimes, not handle immigration cases. This revelation invalidates the government’s legal defense. The Fourth Amendment bans warrantless, groundless bodily searches solely to stockpile biometrics for future investigations, yet DHS’s mass sampling directly violates this core constitutional protection of bodily privacy.                                    

• Golden Dome’s Space-Based Interceptor program is real and already under contract. On April 24, 2026, Space Systems Command said it had awarded 'agreements' to 12 companies, with a potential combined value of up to $3.2 billion. The objective is a proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellation capable of boost, midcourse, and glide-phase engagements, with an initial capability demonstration targeted for 2028.  Reuters also reported that the 12 firms include SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Anduril. The Pentagon aims to initiate tests by late 2026 for its "Golden Dome" space-based missile defense program, featuring flight demonstrations in 2027 and a final intercept test in 2029.  Despite the aggressive timeline, the program faces significant skepticism regarding high costs and potential arms race risks, according to Bloomberg. "Democratic lawmakers including Senator Ed Markey and Representative John Garamendi have also raised concerns that placing weapons in orbit could fuel an arms race with China and Russia." 

• The Islander: A German journalist who asked how Europe can “help kill more Russians” is the grandson of a senior Wehrmacht officer. Michael Martens of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung put the question to Zelensky in Belgrade: 'How can Europe help kill more Russians?' The same Martens has written openly about his grandfather, Hans-Hermann Martens, a prosecutor and senior officer who served under Hitler's Wehrmacht High Command. A group of Germans have now launched a petition demanding he be dismissed from his post at the newspaper. It has already collected thousands of signatures. The irony of these people claiming there is no Nazi problem in Ukraine...The bloodline is not an accident of history but a continuity.
• They look like ordinary patrol gloves, which is what makes them effective. An officer wearing them can grab your arm and you would notice nothing unusual -- until he presses a switch and sends a jolt of electricity into your body. The manufacturer calls the sensation a "pain stimulus," and says it "typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds." ICE wants thousands of them. Speaking of fascism....

NATO 3.0: The Transatlantic Cage and the Rise of the Bunkerstate

The transformation of NATO and Europe’s new role as an attritional node

By Nel Bonilla

The NATO summit in Ankara has concluded, yet its shadow looms larger than ever. Many analysts have argued that this year’s gathering was primarily a vehicle for supercharging the arms industry. While that is patently true, reducing the summit to defense contracts misses a harsh qualitative shift. Namely: what exactly is the "NATO 3.0" doctrine that has now been formally ratified and publicized?

A revealing glimpse into this shift occurred on April 9, 2026. When asked on CNN whether the alliance had failed a test set by U.S. President Trump regarding the US-Iran war, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte offered a strikingly candid assessment:

“They have done what they promised before in a case like this because they know that when it comes to NATO, it’s there to protect the United States because US needs to secure Atlantic and secure Arctic and secure Europe to stay safe here in the US mainland but it is also there to make sure Europe is safe and to be this platform of power projection for the United States. So, what the US did with Iran, they could do because so many European countries lived up to those commitments.“

This blunt acknowledgment of NATO as an explicit vehicle for U.S. power projection lies at the very core of NATO 3.0. It provides the essential context for the current wave of troop withdrawals, industrial militarization, and unprecedented structural integrations—such as the embedding of a U.S. Army colonel as the deputy head of the Operations Division inside the German Army Command this coming October to optimize joint operations within NATO.

That statement alone should make one thing clear: NATO 3.0 is neither a story of a transatlantic rift nor a simple return to Cold War containment. Rather, it reflects how U.S.-led functional elites have accepted multipolarity as an inescapable condition. Crucially, however, accepting that reality does not mean accepting sovereign equality as an outcome. In their worldview, multipolarity is something to be managed and actively undermined; starting, ironically, with their own “allies.” The U.S. core is attempting to reshape this multipolar world in its own image, using Europe, via NATO, as its primary and first testing ground.

The alliance is being reorganized so that Europe and other partners shoulder the ground-level burden: supplying funding, industrial output, physical infrastructure, and the heavy human casualties of conventional attritional warfare. Meanwhile, the United States secures its grip on the overarching command layer. Washington retains the ultimate strategic keys—from the nuclear umbrella and long-range strike capabilities to the digital brain of intelligence networks, cloud infrastructure, and AI integration—while reserving sole authority over global priorities, technical standards, and economic coercion. Stripped of its rhetoric, NATO 3.0 is simply one operational node within the broader Bunkerstate, designed to keep multipolarity inside a multi-layered cage.

~ Nel Bonilla is a PhD candidate specializing in Migration Sociology, Social Geography, and Conflict Studies. I want to understand the links between human movements, urban dynamics, and the socio-political forces that shape our world. (The above is just an excerpt from her larger article. 

Celente: 'It's not a government, it's a crime syndicate'

Gerald Celente is an American author, trend forecaster, publisher of the Trends Journal, business consultant, and the founder of the Trends Research Institute.  And a peacenik.

He makes clear, 'It's not capitalism, it's fascism. According to [Italy's WW2 leader] Mussolini, the merger of state and corporate powers is fascism.'  

'In New York there is a Gen Z revolution that elected the unknown Zohran Mamdani as mayor.' 

'Gen Z, they got no future. They are broke and busted', he says.

'The world has been taken over by the [Mr.] Bigs'. 

'The biz of America is war, the biz of China is biz'.

'My greatest fear is nuclear war'.

Celente is a smart, fascinating and spirited person.

Mutiny aboard US carrier Abraham Lincoln off Iranian coast

Recent reports indicate a serious mutiny situation aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Seven U.S. Navy personnel have possibly been killed and several others injured in a violent clash among the crew, highlighting growing unrest and morale issues during an extended deployment.

Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.

A woman at the meeting told acting navy secretary, Hung Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported. The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended. “He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said. 

Bonnie York, whose stepson is aboard the Lincoln, told MS NOW she had been told a doctor or therapist on the ship warned the crew needed to reach port before people started “losing their minds.” She voted for Trump—and partly because he promised not to start any new wars. She no longer believes the country is safer for it. “You’ve essentially stranded them out there,” she said of the crew. 

Seven US Navy personnel have reportedly been killed and several others wounded in a violent clash aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as growing unrest among the carrier’s crew has exposed mounting pressure inside the US military amid a prolonged deployment. 

The incident erupted after an adviser to US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Brad Cooper boarded the carrier to address mounting complaints from crew members following protests by their families over the ship’s prolonged deployment, according to Tasnim News Agency, citing an informed military source. The adviser was reportedly met with boos and had water bottles thrown at him while addressing a gathering of personnel. The confrontation subsequently escalated into a fight among crew members involving knives and other bladed weapons, leaving seven personnel dead and several others wounded, according to the source.

Pistol Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, dismissed the accounts as “more fake news”.

Deployment Context

The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for over 260 days, which is a modern-era record for a U.S. aircraft carrier. This prolonged deployment has led to significant stress and mental health challenges among the crew

Conditions and Morale

Reports from military families describe poor living conditions, including food shortages and inadequate facilities, contributing to the deteriorating morale. 

Response and Claims

In addition to internal conflicts, there are external tensions, with Iran claiming to have attacked the carrier, although U.S. officials have denied these allegations. 

Scott Ritter on Trump's lost war in Iran & system collapse

Hegseth and Netanyahu lied to Trump about an easy war on Iran. They lost.

Weapons corporation stockholders are the only ones who benefit.

The entire US economy is a pyramid scheme that funnels money to greedy, corrupt money changers. Trump isn’t the only one of those.

Oil, fertilizer, and other needed resources can't be easily replaced due to Trump's folly which will lead to a global crisis.

Iran and Russia have notified the US that all negotiations are over during the next two years due to non-stop lies from the White House.

We are told that Trump is now bored with the Iran war. What happens next?

Thus his recent pivot to Greenland again. After that will it be Cuba?

Tucker interviews Kim Dotcom about free speech & democracy

Kim Dotcom knows what it’s like to be spied on. He’s a hacker, and therefore an expert on digital surveillance. He watched Tucker's new docuseries on internet privacy, so we invited him to talk to us. What followed was very dark.  

Kim Dotcom is a German-Finnish internet entrepreneur, hacker, and political activist best known as the founder of Megaupload, once one of the world's largest file-sharing sites.

In 2012, US authorities shut Megaupload down and charged Dotcom with criminal copyright infringement, racketeering, and money laundering, triggering a New Zealand police raid on his home and a legal battle over extradition that has run for more than a decade. He is a vocal critic of government surveillance and internet censorship. 

He states that 'direct democracy' like in Switzerland is the only safe way to have any semblance of free thought and expression.

He also predicts that the US-NATO will expand their war on Russia. In the end Dotcom predicts Russia will win because Europe actually does not have any real armies. Same goes for the war against Iran. Iran would win.