These thoughts come to you from a bomb shelter underneath my hotel. My mobile tells me another one of Vladimir Putin’s ballistic missiles is headed our way.

I tell you this not for the drama, but to remind you that this is no longer a novelty for millions of Ukrainians.

It has been this way most nights for three years now. Being voyeuristic about it here would be to undervalue the emotional toll it has taken on so many people. I’ll be gone tomorrow, and they’ll still have to endure. 

Australia’s media establishment has a problem and it’s not just about declining revenues or shrinking newsrooms. It’s about a fundamental failure to understand where we live and what’s at stake in our own neighbourhood.

Bruce Dover

While authoritarian regimes weaponise information across the broader Indo-Pacific, Australian news outlets continue to treat our nearest neighbours as if they no longer existed. Certainly, the Middle East crisis and our daily obsession with Donald Trump’s latest pronouncements have added to our myopia, but have we forgotten where we live?

It is a quaint fact that the mediocre critic demands, in the one breath, a Parliament representative of all the people, and a Parliament of all the virtues and intelligences. A Parliament of genius would not represent the people, who are emphatically not genius, and Parliaments as they are, with one or two men above the average intelligence, and many men of average intelligence, and more men little better than morons, represents the nation — any nation.

RANDOLPH BEDFORD, Naught to Thirty-three (1944).

GUSNOTE: AND THIS INCLUDES WOMEN IN POLITICS AS WELL.... OKAY, I APOLOGISE....

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

Australia has sanctioned the Russian pop singer Shaman, along with 36 other individuals and seven organizations, according to the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The list, published on Thursday, also includes renowned actor and TV presenter Vyacheslav Manucharov.

The people and enterprises were targeted for “engaging in an activity or performing a function that is of economic or strategic significance to Russia.” Those blacklisted are barred from entering the country and face asset freezes, meaning any holdings in Australia will be blocked.

The list of sanctioned individuals includes the head of the Republic of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov; Russia’s First Deputy Energy Minister, Pavel Sorokin; media producer Anton Zlatopolsky; journalist Aram Gabrelyanov; and three-time Olympic synchronized swimming champion and Moscow City Duma deputy, Maria Kiseleva.

On this episode of The David Frum Show, David opens with a Memorial Day message about corruption and extortion in the Trump White House, including revelations about meme-coin pay-to-play schemes and foreign-financed golf courses.

US President Donald Trump has called for an end to the corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, days after Israel and Iran reached a ceasefire.

Trump showered his Middle Eastern ally with praise in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday evening. “Bibi Netanyahu was a WARRIOR, like perhaps no other Warrior in the History of Israel,” he wrote.

He hailed Netanyahu’s leadership during Israel’s conflict with Iran and slammed the allegations against him as “politically motivated.”

Ukraine can still achieve a military victory over Russia, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and head of the US European Command, Alexus Grynkewich, said during a US Senate hearing on Tuesday. He was confirmed in his new role with the US-led military bloc earlier this month.

“I believe Ukraine can win,” he responded when asked if Kiev could still prevail despite significant casualties and waning financial support. Grynkewich also noted that Ukrainian forces are displaying a level of tenacity that is hard for outsiders to fully comprehend.

He did not specify what form a Ukrainian victory might take, nor did he provide further detail regarding battlefield prospects.

Almost all of Australia’s top chief executives are, according to their boards at least, knocking it out of the park in terms of performance.

Democracy should be the right enjoyed by people of different countries rather than the privilege of certain countries. As the so-called Summit for Democracy, US' newest international charade, is about to kick off on Thursday, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, released on Monday the research report "Ten Questions for American Democracy."

10 Questions for American Democracy
By Global Times
Published: Dec 06, 2021

When Russian President Vladimir Putin told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last week that the world needs “a new model of global growth,” many Western commentators heard only a familiar plea: lift the sanctions, drop the tariffs, stop using trade as a geopolitical cudgel.

Russia takes on the West’s biggest obsession
Putin says the world needs a new growth model. He might be right.
By Andrey Kortunov

They came. They bunker-busted. They fled.

And then they set the stage to control the narrative via a massive P.R. operation.

POTUS hailed the “spectacular” victory of B-2s flying from the US to West Asia to release MOPs (“Massive Ordnance Penetrators) over Fordow in the middle of the night of June 22 (significantly, the same date of the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941).

Trump 2.0 functionaries gloated that the Iranian nuclear program was now gone.

Empire of Chaos Takes War on BRICS to Next Level

BY PEPE ESCOBAR

Protesters in Venice are claiming an "enormous victory" after US tech billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wedding guests were forced to "run away" from the city centre, moving their main celebration to another location.

The venues for the three-day party to mark the wedding of one of the world's richest men to TV presenter Lauren Sanchez were never officially revealed. 

But the lavish celebrations were supposed to culminate in an event on Saturday at the sumptuous Scuola Grande della Misericordia.

A local official in Venice has now confirmed to the BBC that the guests will gather instead at the Arsenale, further from the centre.

We talk glibly about our [Australia's] future in Asia, but we are stuck in a US and UK media cul de sac.

The Washington consensus and our legacy media frames and conditions our thinking and actions. It promotes fear of Asia, the yellow peril.

An updated post from August 23, 2021

John Menadue

Anyone with any knowledge of Iran's history and culture will know that it will not be bribed or bullied into doing what the West wants.

It has no reason to trust Western promises, and having endured the suffering of the Iran-Iraq War, is unlikely to buckle under any pressure, military or economic, that the West would be prepared to impose.