…Back in the early 1990s, I opposed NATO expansion after the fall of the Berlin Wall, because I thought our priority should be trying to nurture a democratic Russia. I don’t regret that for a second. Now, 30 years later, though, when the prospects for a democratic Russia feel utterly remote, I would gladly use NATO and the E.U. to nurture and secure a democratic Ukraine.

Because if Ukraine can escape this war — even if it has to temporarily cede some territory to Putin — and can complete the anti-corruption and other regulatory reforms that are required for it to join the European Union, the brainpower, agricultural power and military power that Ukraine represents would serve as an important model and magnet for Russians wanting a different future, not to mention other shaky Balkan states.

…Which is why, as much as I value NATO as a security alliance, I have never lost sight of how the European Union — which Americans tend to know little about — has managed to quietly build itself into its own kind of United States of Europe, another great center of free markets, free people democracy and the rule of law. To be sure, the E.U. has plenty of its own problems managing day to day. But considering Europe’s long history of fratricide, the E.U. is a quiet, boring miracle. Adding Ukraine to it would make it only stronger.

Indeed, as I’ve thought about what could be the most meaningful and painful punishment for Putin and his war crimes, I decided it would be for him to be sentenced to sit in the Kremlin for the rest of his life, hiding from coup plotters and having to look out at a Ukraine that is a secure and flourishing member of the single largest democratic, free market/free travel zone in the world — the E.U — while Putin’s citizens would be left with the freedom to vacation and invest in North Korea and Iran.

That would be Vladimir Putin’s nightmare. Our job is to help make it come true.

(Gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=_shXNurOe-J5qx42jNmZw_c27LLzewm3ayHlLWSjNoVqsPQsBKICwIf-7N3SPpYazeF78nsy9Ir0Y4vZZAyRAgSG2GE8o-OL-0O0G0YquQ9W71DVSYnaUWktLyg84e7lPabKIMPdN_Efdzn7hE7RU40kGLiRRXRvbmYrO1dzmL1k4gvIfLmpJ2uDWSM_nMUHvGdJ3ZMlVsnwb_Nx8Q25A9V2didrXkevIs58w_VMqcvpTSN5KyMgF2d1kLAYhLxN5tHpABRcE3UVaodxyVdyG9MGXhwtgqCNvwGbBmCeAJNt0iRDrP3R2iws4JYDv3zbTL1tvKgRJfI3D_s&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The unwillingness to seek therapy is especially true of “malignant narcissists,” who, in addition to the usual characteristics, exhibit antisocial and psychopathic features such as lying chronically or enjoying inflicting pain or suffering on others.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-narcissism-science-confronts-a-widely-misunderstood-phenomenon/

There have been many moments when Trump’s diminishing of the Republican party has become readily apparent, and this debate goes on the list. The party, and the candidates representing it, has become meaner, dumber, and wholly divorced from the issues Americans actually care about.

What did the Republican candidates identify as the problems plaguing America? Hunter Biden. Teachers’ unions. George-Soros-funded district attorneys. Critical race theory in schools and trans kids in locker rooms.

What did they shrug off? Climate change and the deadly disasters it has caused. Endemic gun violence that is now the leading killer of American children. The man who will likely beat them all for the Republican nomination being indicted for a slew of crimes.

This country is worse thanks to today’s Republican party, and today’s Republican party is among the worst aspects of this country. Over and over again, Republican politicians and conservative commentators talk about all of the ways in which life in America has deteriorated, how we are no longer as great as we once were. They often pin the blame on immigrants, feminists, racial justice activists, Democrats, and changing social mores. But if Americans really want to see a striking example of our national nosedive, they needn’t look further than at the ridiculous men (and one woman) on a Fox News stage tonight.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/24/who-won-the-republican-debate-our-panel-reacts?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Johannes Fritz, a maverick Austrian biologist, needed to come up with a plan, again, if he was going to prevent his rare and beloved birds from going extinct.

To survive the European winter, the northern bald ibis — which had once disappeared entirely from the wild on the continent — needs to migrate south for the winter, over the Alps, before the mountains become impassable.

But shifting climate patterns have delayed when the birds begin to migrate, and they are now reaching the mountains too late to make it over the peaks, locking them in an icy death trap.

“Two or three years, and they’d be extinct again,” Mr. Fritz said.

Determined to save them, Mr. Fritz decided he would teach the birds a new, safer migration route by guiding them himself in a tiny aircraft. And he was confident he could succeed in this daring, unconventional plan — because he had done it before.

The British-born actor and singer Jane Birkin has been found dead at her home in Paris, the French culture ministry said on Sunday.

Birkin, 76, was best known overseas for her 1969 hit in which she and her lover, the late French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, sang the sexually explicit Je t’aime … moi non plus. Birkin found fame in her adopted France, catapulted into the public eye by her turbulent relationship with Gainsbourg. Her heavily accented French became her personal style signifier. She crossed the channel in 1968 at the age of 22 to star in a film alongside Gainsbourg, who was 18 years her senior. It was the start of a 13-year relationship that made them France’s most famous couple, in the spotlight as much for their bohemian and hedonistic lifestyle as for their work.

The doe-eyed Birkin, with her soft voice and androgynous silhouette, quickly became a sex symbol, recording the steamy Je t’aime … moi non plus with a growling Gainsbourg. Banned on radio in several countries and condemned by the Vatican, the song was a worldwide success.

“He and I became the most famous of couples in that strange way because of Je t’aime and because we stuck together for 13 years and he went on being my friend until the day he died. Who could ask for more?” Birkin told CNN in 2006. “So Paris became my home. I’ve been adopted here. They like my accent.”

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jul/16/jane-birkin-actor-and-singer-dies-aged-76?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other