Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalPutin and associates have little to lose with nuclear "threats", and perhaps a little to gain
Putin is already cast as a pariah now so he doesn't have a reputation to defend anymore as any kind of reputable world leader. Meanwhile I've heard some pundits muse about NATO and/or one or more western nations imposing a "No-Fly" zone over Ukraine. This is something Ukraine has requested from the West, and Putin no doubt has noticed that increasingly the West is taking Ukraine's requests seriously, and eventually complying. If Putin's troops start increasing their rate of atrocities in Ukraine, pressure will grow on the West to do more than just add sanctions and send armaments to Ukraine. From Putin's perspective nuclear sabre rattling serves a purpose if it in anyway fortifies the resolve of NATO nations to steer clear of Ukraine's borders, either on the ground or in the air, no matter what Putin's forces do inside of them.
Democracy Vs Autocracy doesn't get much starker, does it?
Joe Biden said the challenge of our times is the defense of democracy against a resurgent world wide tide of autocracy. He said that long before Putin directly threatened Ukraine, long before Russian troops massed at Ukraine's borders and invaded Ukraine's vibrant, fledgling democracy.
Here is the White House August 11, 2021 statement and release:
"President Biden to Convene Leaders’ Summit for Democracy
The President has said that the challenge of our time is to demonstrate that democracies can deliver by improving the lives of their own people and by addressing the greatest problems facing the wider world. In his first six months in office, the President has reinvigorated democracy at home, vaccinating 70% of population, passing the American Rescue plan, and advancing bipartisan legislation to invest in our infrastructure and competitiveness. And he has rebuilt our alliances with our democratic partners and allies, rallying the world to stand up against human rights abuses, to address the climate crisis, and to fight the global pandemic, including by donating hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to countries around the globe.
In keeping this commitment, today President Biden is pleased to announce that in December he will bring together leaders from a diverse group of the world’s democracies at a virtual Summit for Democracy, to be followed in roughly a year’s time by a second, in-person Summit. The virtual Summit, to take place on December 9 and 10, will galvanize commitments and initiatives across three principal themes: defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights. Following a year of consultation, coordination, and action, President Biden will then invite world leaders to gather once more to showcase progress made against their commitments. Both Summits will bring together heads of state, civil society, philanthropy, and the private sector, serving as an opportunity for world leaders to listen to one another and to their citizens, share successes, drive international collaboration, and speak honestly about the challenges facing democracy so as to collectively strengthen the foundation for democratic renewal."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/11/president-biden-to-convene-leaders-summit-for-democracy/
Find more here: https://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy/
Now the whole world is seeing what Joe Biden warned against. And the people of Ukraine are once again showing current and would be tyrants that even brute force can not reliably suppress the will to be free, nor can it ever extinguish it.
Procol Harum founder, songwriter, pianist and lead vocalist Gary Brooker has died
The news is from yesterday, and it has already been posted elsewhere on DU (in the Latest Breaking News Forum and in the Music Appreciation Group) but I couldn't find it mentioned anywhere in the General Discussion Forum and I think it deserves a GD thread. My apologies if this is a duplicate.
Like millions of others, I was totally captivated the very first instant that I heard "A Whiter Shade of Pale", but I continued to love Procol Harum's music over subsequent years and albums. Gary died of cancer. The BBC wrote this story upon his passing:
"Procol Harum singer Gary Brooker dies at 76"
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60485697
His music meant a lot to me.
RIP Gary 
American Putin apologists will implode if Russia launches an all out war in Ukraine
Ukraine is a white, European, Christian nation with major cosmopolitan cities. Exactly the type of people that Republican base voters tend to identify with. Russia, under Putin, made major inroads over the last decade currying favor inside today's Republican Party. Under Trump Putin almost managed to destroy NATO. Russia has reason to believe that Trump can be reinstalled as their boy in Washington come 2024, but all that effort can go up in smoke if, for example, Putin launches an all out assault on Kiev.
Americans, in recent decades, viewed urban warfare on TV, leveling homes in Syria, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. We saw floods of refugees fleeing violence in Rwanda, in Libya, in Myanmar. But they weren't white European Christians.
Tucker Carlson can try spinning fast enough to turn a turbine providing power for Boise, but that won't make Putin palatable to white Christian Fox viewers watching Ukrainian churches get bombed to smithereens.
Putin closed within striking distance of successfully subverting American democracy. That Kremlin wet dream will be among the first casualties of Putin's war in Ukraine, if missiles start falling there.
Democracies ARE inherently more resistent to expansionist aggression than Autocracies
The world, especially in an era of nuclear weapons, becomes increasingly dangerous as Democracy, internationally, more and more comes under attack. President Biden sounded the clarion call of the young 21st century when he framed the the great challenge facing humanity now as the defense and strengthening of democracies in the face of growing authoritarian movements around the globe.
Democracies do not come with fail safe guarantees. Any government, under any system, can fall under the sway of imperialistic thinking. Of course it is pointed out that America exercised an inordinate degree of power, during the second half of the 20th century in particular, and that America's military is spread across the globe , and that America directly and indirectly militarily intervened in the internal affairs of numerous other nations. All very true. America was, and arguably still is, the most powerful nation on earth. Joe Biden, in the realm of politics, is known to say "Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative." Something similar is true with Geopolitics. What would our world be like today if Germany under Hitler, or The Soviet Union under Stalin, had somehow emerged from World War II as far and away the most powerful nation on Earth? What if Putin's Russia commanded the same domestic and international resources now as does the United States today?
Imperfect as they obviously can be, leaders of democracies contend with far greater checks and balances over their personal authority and ambition than do leaders in totalitarian regimes. Democracies, like the United Kingdom and the United States, did not represent full expressions of democracy during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The United States did not begin to experience full democracy until the mid 1960's, after the voting rights act was passed. The more empowered the broad base of citizenry of a nation is, the less likely that nation is to plunge headfirst into wars of conquest. There can be exceptions that seem to fly in the face of it, but that remains the rule. The continuing retreat of the Republican Party from fully embracing democratic ("small" d) values, fuels the ambitions, and subsequent reckless behavior, of tyrants like Vladimir Putin.
Boomers, we were once the "new children" that Tim Buckley wrote and sang about
His second album "Goodbye and Hello", released in 1967, was both epic and brilliant, and still to this day only dated in spots, and that only because in some of his songs, in particular the title cut, he wrote in the spirit of that time. That cut was not my favorite song on the album, that one might be "No Man Can Find The War". but it got the most air play at the time, and it was considered sort of an anthem. Here is verse three from from "Goodbye and Hello", followed by verse six and chorus six (it's a long song with a lot of lyrics, I posted a link to all of them below these):
"The king and the queen in their castle of billboards
Sleepwalk down the hallways dragging behind
All their possessions and transient treasures
As they go to worship the electronic shrine
On which is playing the late, late commercial
In that hollowest house of the opulent blind
And I wave goodbye to Mammon
And smile hello to a stream
O the new children buy, I am young
All the world for a song, I will live
Without a dime, I am strong
To which they belong, I can give
Nobody owns, you the strange
Anything, anywhere, seed of day
Everyone's grown, feel the change
Up so big they can share, know the way
Know the way, know the way...
...The antique people are fading out slowly
Like newspapers flaming in mind suicide
Godless and sexless, directionless loons
Their sham sandcastles dissolve in the tide
They put on their deathmasks and compromise daily
The new children will live for the elders have died."
https://genius.com/Tim-buckley-goodbye-and-hello-lyrics
I turned 18 in 1967, and thought I was one of those "new children" then. Though Buckley's old "elders" may have died, there are always elders, and now in Tim Buckley's way of looking at it, I am one of those. Between 1967 and now, two or three generations of newer "new children" have come of age. When they view the world they inherited they still find many "elders" standing in the way of realizing their visions of peace and justice, equity and joy. Now I find myself hoping that current "new children" remain defiantly unrealistic. I root for millions of "new children" who believe that everything that must be changed, can be changed.
When I was 18, 19, and 20, I did realize that the majority of people, even those of my own generation, could not yet conceive of a future akin to the world that Tim Buckley waxed poetic about. But I thought that could be changed within a decade, or two at most. I thought we were riding a wave of tsunami proportions, that ultimately could not be resisted. Change was coming, I believed, positive change that would not, could not be reversed.
When I was 18 I believed racism was rooted in (fellow) whites of older generations, that youth were turning the page on racism, and that we would largely vanquish it when our own generation assumed the leading role in society. I held similar fantasies about war and poverty. I was naive as hell. I don't regret it. It fed the courage of my convictions through many a long battle for social justice and a better world.
Fascism is on the rise in America, hate crimes are cresting, Europe is potentially facing the largest invasion of one nation by another since WWII, but such challenges are not unique to our time. America once was headed by a progression of slave owning Presidents, oligarchs ruled America throughout our gilded age, and America fought two World Wars. Today I am older and wiser than I was in 1967, but I still revere the idealism that I had when I was 18, and I pray that the failures of my own generation don't dampen the spirit of those to whom the torch is passed today.
P.S. I found a documentary about Tim Buckley on YouTube that includes clips from live performances of 13 of his songs (among other things.) It's called "My Fleeting House", which is another great song of his, parts of which are in the film. Portions of "No Man Can Find The War" begin at the 14.13 point
Mueller built multiple strong cases of Trump obstructing judtice. No indictments followed
Theoretically Trump couldn't be indicted while he was the sitting President, but nothing was stopping the DOJ from pursuing obstruction of justice cases against Trump once he was out of office. The statute of limitations hadn't run out, and there was no need for prosecutes to painstakingly build a case against Trump from the bottom up from scratch. The evidence against him was already assembled and neatly bundled by Mueller's probe, on multiple counts: Instant indictments, just add resolve.
All of Trump's standard criminal ploys were well documented; the lies, the blatant appeals for wrongdoing in full public view, the crass dangling of pardons to potential witnessed against him in implicit return for silence. All if it remains unpursued. So why on Earth would anyone expect Trump to not do the same thing again? And of course he has. He is doing it right now and he will continue to do it unless and until someone holds him legally accountable. America can not "turn the page" on Trump's treasonous behavior. It encourages him to commit further and more dangerous betrayals. They are ongoing. They are accelerating, and they will continue to gather steam until he finally is held criminally culpable.
DOJ Silence Regarding Trump Plays Into His Race War Baiting Game
No doubt Trump would prefer he were under no risk of prosecution whatsoever, but if anyone is out to possibly indict him, the way it's playing out is ideally suited to Trump's preferred framing of being a victim of Black racists. Currently three African American District Attorneys, all from urban Democratic strongholds, are heading up the only probes Trump is known to be facing for potential criminal conduct. The only State District Attorney conducting a civil investigation of Trump is also an African American, Letitia James in New York, and she comes from New York City.
Virtually Trump's entire "Stop The Steal" Big Lie campaign is premised on an assertion that massive voter fraud occurs in large Democratic controlled urban areas containing sizable minority populations. It is no coincidence that Trump's allies tried to decertify the election results in Detroit Michigan, or that the Atlanta metropolitan area was alleged by them to be the scene of massive fraud and corrupt election officials, or that the Republicans in Arizona repeatedly refuse to accept the election returns from Maricopa County (greater Phoenix) as legitimate. Race is an essential part of Trump's election theft narrative, with African American racism and corruption alleged to be at the core of virtually all of it.
As it stands now all of the legitimate legal authorities pursuing criminal charges against Donald Trump have black faces, and they all either live in minority majority major cities (Atlanta and Washington DC) or in NYC - which has long been identified with ethnic diversity and which just elected an African American Mayor. It doesn't take Trump's propaganda machine much effort to spin current attempts to hold Trump criminally accountable for his conduct as merely thinly veiled racist attacks against him. Continued silence from the Attorney General of the United States of America leaves a handful of urban Black District Attorneys identified alone as the nexus of Trump's current criminal liability. That is a narrative Trump can run with.
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