Phoebe Weston, - Reader Supported News / The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is an excellent essay giving the timeline showing how we got to where we are today. well worth your time to click through and read all of it. The only way we are going to end this trend is by changing our cultural worldview, and making fostering wellbeing at every level the first priority. and we have every little time to make this change.
An abandoned farm in the dust bowl near Dalhart, Texas, June 1938. Credit: Dorothea Lange / FSA / OWI Collection / Courtesy of Library of Congress
The story of the biodiversity crisis starts with a cold-case murder mystery that is tens of thousands of years old. When humans started spreading across the globe they discovered a world full of huge, mythical-sounding mammals called “megafauna”, but by the end of the Pleistocene, one by one, these large animals had disappeared. There is no smoking gun and evidence from ancient crime scenes is – unsurprisingly – patchy. But what investigators have learned suggests a prime suspect: humans.
Take the case of Genyornis, one of the world’s heaviest birds, which was more than 2 metres tall and weighed in excess of 200kg. It lived in Australia until, along with many other megafauna, it went extinct 50,000 years ago. In North America, giant beavers weighing the same as a fridge and an armadillo-like creature called a glyptodon, which was the size of a small car, […]
Stephen Bezruchka, M.D., M.P.H., Associate Teaching Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Health Systems & Population Health and of Global Health at the School of Public Health, University of Washington. - Salon
Stephan: Here is evidence validating my assertion that wealth inequality is destructive of social wellbeing. This isn't going to change until Citizens United is either reversed or Congress passes an act to publicly fund elections and make it a felony for an individual or any corporate form to transfer money to an individual in public office. That should be followed by an act changing the tax code to what it was back in the 1950s when the middle class was being created.
Patients rest in a hallway in the overloaded Emergency Room area at Providence St. Mary Medical Center on January 27, 2021 in Apple Valley, California. Credit: Mario Tama / Getty
In 1992, a publication appeared in the British Medical Journal written by Richard Wilkinson, featuring a simple graph of life expectancy in 1981 among nine rich nations, along with the percentage of income received by the poorest 70% of families for each country. It showed how greater inequality in a country was associated with lower life expectancy, with only a weak link between national incomes and mortality rates. Richer countries were not necessarily healthier than less rich ones, at least among developed nations. Increases in income inequality over time were linked to higher death rates. But were the results valid?
Depending on a single study as definitive evidence is a shaky way to stake a claim. Knowledge progresses by conjectures, critical commentary, discussions, and either general acceptance or rejection. Yet five previous studies, beginning in 1979, demonstrate similar findings. In 1996, two studies from University of California and Harvard reported the same […]
Mike McIntire, Investigative Reporter - New York Times
Stephan: The assault by the Republican Party on American democracy is so multi-faceted that is hard to keep all the pieces straight, and see them as oriented towards a single objective: Keep a shrinking racist White minority in power whatever it takes. You probably noticed for instance the deafening silence of Congressional Republicans who have nothing to say about criminal Trump's dinner with an explicit White supremacy, antisemitic loudmouth. Or the Republican gerrymandering and suppression of voting by people of color. The move in Red state legislatures to remove any regulations on openly carrying firearms.
It is this last manifestation of the Republican anti-democratic efforts that may be the source of the most violence. As this article describes there are increasing reports, particularly in Red states, of White militia thugs threatening violence against voters whose choices they do not like. It is an amalgam of America's obsessive gun psychosis, and MAGAt politics, and it is going to result in violence and death. Yet, once again, there is nothing but silence coming from Republican leaders. Does that surprise you? It doesn't surprise me because we now have one party that does not like or support democracy in the United States because they know they are a minority and will not stay in power in a healthy democracy.
Members of the Boogaloo Boys gathered for a “unity rally” at Michigan’s State Capitol in October 2020. Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times
Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense — increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one’s voice and, just as often, quieting someone else’s.
This month, armed protesters appeared outside an elections center in Phoenix, hurling baseless accusations that the election for governor had been stolen from the Republican, Kari Lake. In October, Proud Boys with guns joined a rally in Nashville where conservative lawmakers spoke against transgender medical treatments for minors.
In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced. Among the others were rallies in support of gun […]
Stephan: I am not Jewish, but because of my last name -- a gift from the Ellis Island clerk who processed my paternal grandparents when they came to the U.S. in 1906 and found their surname had too many consonants, hence Schwartz -- it has given me the gift of learning about antisemitism. Given what a small community Jews constitute in the U.S., 2.4% of 332 million, antisemitism is a weird kind of hate. But nonetheless it is prevalent and growing in America as this report on surveys describes.
Credit: Israel Andrade / Unsplash
ResumeBuilder.com surveyed 1,131 hiring managers in November, asking them about their views of Jewish individuals and their perspectives on antisemitism in the workplace.
What did they find in their survey?
Their survey showed that 26% of hiring managers say they are less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants. When asked why, 38% said that “Jews have too much power and control,” which is also tied to another 38% who said, “Jews claim to be the ‘chosen people.’”
A few of the other “reasons” were that “Jews have too much wealth”, “Jews are greedy”, “Jews killed Jesus,” and many other antisemitism responses, according to the ResumeBuilder survey.
Another 26% of hiring managers make assumptions about whether or not the applicant is Jewish based on their looks and appearances.
“In this era of fighting for equality in hiring, Jewish individuals have largely been left out of the conversation and the issue of antisemitism has, for the most part, gone unaddressed.”Stacie Haller, executive recruiter and career counselor
Stephan: Bill McKibben has written an essay that, I think, gives the best assessment of the Sharm El-Sheikh COP27 conference I have read. The main takeaway for me is that the leaders of the governments of the world just don't understand or are willing to do what needs to be done to deal with climate change. That guarantees we will live through massive misery, social upheaval, and death.
COP 27 sign in Egypt Credit: Euronews
I’ve actually been home from Egypt for a couple of days, so this final dispatch comes in part from talking to people still in the conference center at Sharm El-Sheikh where—with utter predictability—talks went into 24 hours of overtime before finally concluding in the early morning hours Sunday.
The talks produced one real success: civil society had focused on getting the rich nations to agree to a ‘loss and damage’ fund, and at the last minute they did just that. It was a triumph for movement organizers from the global south—for groups like the Climate Action Network—that made the issue the unrelenting focus of their efforts in the lead-up to this COP, and for good reason: as Reuters reported
55 vulnerable countries estimated their combined climate-linked losses over the last two decades totalled $525 billion, or 20% of their collective GDP. Some research suggests that by 2030 such losses could reach $580 billion per year.
Read those numbers again—they are astonishing (a fifth of GDP!) and there is no doubt where […]
