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.

Forget the fog of war. Even in war, and sometimes especially in war, some things are exceedingly clear. Regarding the so-called ‘Hamas-Israel War’, for instance, it is obvious that in reality it is not a war at all but a genocide, namely the Gaza Genocide, carried out by Israel against the Palestinians whose unbroken resistance will be the stuff of legends, and of history too.

Moscow, beware: Germany just discovered the joys of illegal war
Kant is spinning in his grave, while Friedrich Merz is devising maxims from hell

Screenwriters in Hollywood who “say they are Jewish” have been planting pro-war narratives about Iran in mainstream entertainment for more than a decade, Wikileaks has claimed.

Israel launched airstrikes on Iran earlier this month, claiming Tehran was close to creating a nuclear weapon. Over the weekend, the US also directly joined the conflict by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

In a post on X on Sunday, Wikileaks stated that Hollywood writers “who say they are Jewish” have been “planting the mental seeds for war with Iran for years,” citing productions such as Top Gun: Maverick, Homeland, 24, and The Fifth Estate.

Iran has agreed to stop its attacks on Israel after launching nineteen missiles at America’s largest military base in Qatar. President Trump quickly claimed credit for brokering a ceasefire, calling it “The Twelve Day War,” but Iranian officials say the decision was their own, made only after proving they could strike both Israel and US forces. Qatar’s air defenses intercepted most of the missiles, with no casualties reported. As US, Israeli, and Qatari negotiations continue behind the scenes, questions remain about whether this fragile truce will hold, or if Tehran will strike again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtyMxPUD3tM

A Trump official tells The Grayzone that Israel’s Mossad is using CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM’s Gen. Michael Kurilla to influence Trump with cooked intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. Inside the White House, dissenters have been isolated, setting the stage for a regime change war that could cost American lives.

Listen to/watch Max Blumenthal read this article here.

An official in the administration of President Donald Trump has told The Grayzone that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel’s Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran. The Trump official referred to Ratcliffe as “Mossad’s stenographer.”