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A Snapshot Of The Issues Of The Day

"First: Now that USAID is gutted, we hear from frontline humanitarian David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee.

"Then: The Netflix hit sparking an important conversation: Adolescence—it’s about young minds, male rage, and the dangers of social media. Star of the show Stephen Graham joins me.

"Plus: Fear in the occupied West Bank as Israeli settlers, often violently expand their illegal outposts. CNN is there.

"Then: High stakes for Europe and the limits of Trump’s Ukraine-Russia diplomacy. Former Pentagon official Celeste Wallander joins me.

"And: From the archive—on World Water Day, a warning from Sarajevo: painful echoes of water as a weapon of war, from Bosnia back then to Gaza and Ukraine today."Click on the link below for a podcast summary of some of the news of the times that we are in:

USAID Cuts Imperiling Lives (and more)

The USA Should Be Ashamed

"Ukraine is not - as the Russian ambassador said - a 'project'.

"Its statehood has a longer history than Russia. It has been a member of the UN longer than Russia. It has a history, language, identity, and its own aspirations. Poland supports peace, but stable and with respect for the rights of the victim of aggression."

Click here for a 8-minute video from the recent UN gathering to vote on support for Ukraine against Russian aggression. Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the UN essentially unanimously voted against Russia's aggression. A few days ago, the US voted with Iran, North Korea, and Russia to NOT once again condemn them.

The speaker is from Poland and puts the present in the context of European history. Memo to the USA: Isolationism in the face of national aggression never works.

Why Trump Is Beholden To Putin

 David Clayton-Thomas

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Someday the true story of Donald Trump’s Russian connection will be told and it will read like a spy novel worthy of Tom Clancy…

It’s the story of a beauty pageant that led to the election of a President.

In November of 2013 Donald Trump held the Miss Universe Contest in Moscow.

At the time Trump was beyond broke… He was deeply in debt and after five bankruptcies, not a bank in America would lend him money.

For a week Mr. Trump and a bevy of the most beautiful women in the world partied with all the big wigs in Russia… politicos, oligarchs, rock stars, celebrities, even Vladimir Putin himself.

There has been much speculation about what went down in that week of booze, babes and big money, but whatever it was, it changed the course of history.

A few months later the Trump organization received a massive infusion of cash from Deutsche Bank… a German banking giant that has routinely paid millions in fines for illegally laundering money for the Russians.

Trump left Moscow with the financial backing he so desperately needed and Putin had his hooks in Trump.

In 2015 Trump announced his candidacy for POTUS and Putin began actively cultivating his asset.

The Mueller report States unequivocally that Russia conducted a systematic misinformation campaign designed to tarnish Trump’s opponents and promote his candidacy.

Russia’s influence in the 2016 election was pervasive and it worked…

With Putin’s help Donald J Trump became the 45th President of the United States and he wasted no time paying off the debt he owed to his pal Vladimir…

Trump spoke glowingly of him every chance he got… every executive decision benefited Putin.

He ceded the middle east to Russia, withdrew from Syria and allowed Putin to fill the void.

He turned his back on Ukraine, the last bastion standing between Russia and a free Europe.

He disavowed NATO, the alliance that had held Russia at bay for over 70 years.

He pulled US troops out of Germany… something the Kremlin has always wanted.

At the Helsinki summit, Trump chose to publicly believe Putin over his own intelligence agencies.

He attacked America’s friends and embraced her enemies just as Vladimir wanted.

At home Trump became the divider in chief, driving deep divisions between all the different factions of American society.

To divide America from within… to drive a wedge between blacks and whites, rich and poor, left and right, has long been a part of Putin’s KGB playbook.

Russian hackers are inflaming racial tensions across the country, infiltrating radical groups and planting disinformation on social media.

We can only hope that the US Intelligence Services are prepared to address this threat because obviously Mr.Trump isn’t.

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Ukraine And Russia: A History Lession

"Although few Americans paid much attention at the time, the events of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine would turn out to be a linchpin in how the United States ended up where it is a decade later."

Click on the link below to better understand the connection between the Republican Party/MAGA and Putin/Russia:

10 years of US/Ukraine/Russia History

Why It's Important To Help Ukraine

" - - - I guess over the holidays a lot of people talked with family members and their parents, or whomever and they had things to say about the amount of money the United States was spending on Ukraine and wanted to know what the U.S was getting out of it. - - - First, on the other side of this, when Ukraine emerges from the other side of this war, it is going to be an economic power, a big one, if, at the end of the war, it is aligned with Europe. That's good for the United States. It's good for NATO. - - - "

Click on the link below for more:

Let's talk about what the US is getting out of Ukraine

A Different Take On Russia V. Ukraine

"Noting that many democracies—including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, and South Africa—have been reluctant to join the Western campaign to sanction and isolate Russia, CNN's Fareed Zakaria argues it's better to cast Russia's war as a challenge to rules and norms in the global order, not to democracy as a form of governance."

Click on the link below for more:

Don't cast the war in Ukraine as a showdown with autocracy

War Crimes

"The State Department and President Biden have both declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin has committed war crimes in Ukraine. What are the rules of war? What constitutes a war crime? And what consequences might Putin face for the brutality of his invasion?

"Heather and Joanne look back at the centuries-long quest by world leaders and humanitarians to regulate violence in wartime, from General George Washington’s rules of civility during the Revolutionary War, to Abraham Lincoln’s use of the Lieber Code during the Civil War, to the development of the Geneva Conventions."

With the Russian atrocities happening in Ukraine, the age-old phrase "War Crimes" is front-and-center. Click on the link below for an enlightening podcast on the subject:

War Crimes & War Codes