The right-wing podcasters turned Russian propaganda dupes, explained

Stephan: 

Putin and his intelligence services are actively trying to dismantle American democracy and support criminal Trump. That isn’t actually very surprising, of course they are because weaponizing misinformation is so easy because there are not ethical or factual standards on social media. WHat stands out for me is not what the Russians are doing by the American MAGAt political whores who are down on their knees servicing the Russians. I am also astonished and appalled by the number of Americans who are driven by willful ignorance and their darkest emotions. The MAGAt cult really tells us something very important about the state of the culture of the United States, and the reality is quite grim. Those of us who support wellbeing must get everyone we know and can influence to vote and vote for only democrats. This is not about traditional partisan politics; this is about saving America as a democracy.

Dave Rubin is seen on the set of Candace in a Nashville studio in 2021.
Credit:  Jason Kempin / Getty

A cadre of right-wing online personalities including Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern have all allegedly become unwitting agents of Russian information warfare and its activities in the United States, according to an alarming 32-page federal indictment unsealed by the US District Court of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday.

The group of far-right and right-leaning influencers, most of whom are known for podcasts and YouTube shows, are all members or former members of Tenet Media, a Nashville-based content creation company co-owned by yet another well-known conservative media pundit, Lauren Chen.

The Department of Justice is alleging that since its founding in 2022, Tenet has served as a front for Russian agents to spread Russian state-directed content using each of these pundits’ platforms.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda […]

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Trust in Government Assurance of Food Safety Hits Record Low

Stephan: 

If one looks at how Americans assess Congress, the Supreme Court, or even the safety of their food in grocery stores you see it is all declining. The only thing that is going to rebuild this country are the Americans who demand that the country, its laws, tax system, educational system, and healthcare system are all restructured to foster wellbeing. Are you willing to be one of those people? Is that how you think? It is to support and inform people who think that way that I spend all the unpaid hours I do, and that Beth Alexander does, who runs the SR versions and my other websites. The United States is in the equivalent of an internal world war, and it is not clear yet how it is going to come out.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ confidence in the federal government’s ability to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply has reached a record low in Gallup’s trend dating back to 1999. The 57% of U.S. adults who now say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the government to keep the food supply safe is down 11 percentage points from Gallup’s prior reading in 2019.

Roughly eight in 10 Americans expressed faith in the government to ensure food safety in Gallup measures from 1999 to 2006. After a massive salmonella outbreak in 2007, about seven in 10 remained confident. Americans’ confidence stayed near that level in 2008 and 2019 before dropping this year.

These data were collected as part of Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits poll, conducted July 1-21.

While 57% express at least a fair amount of confidence in the government to keep food safe, 28% of Americans do not have much confidence and 14% have “none at all.”

Among partisans, Republicans’ confidence has dropped the most since 2019, which could largely reflect the party of the incumbent president then […]

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Texas’ Right-Wing Leaders Are Going To ‘Scary’ Lengths To Intimidate Political Rivals

Stephan: 

This in varying degrees is what is going on in all the MAGAt controlled Red States. The MAGAt Republicans, as they spell out in their Project 2025, are trying to turn the United States into something like Hungary, a fascist pseudo-democracy controlled by a small group of oligarchs. Texas and Florida are leading examples of this treason. The voters in those states and the other Red states have to make a choice. If they elect people like Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton, they better prepare for enormous misery and suffering, particularly girls and women. I hate doing these stories, but SR is about the reality of the trends shaping our lives, so I have no choice.

Voting rights advocates and civil rights leaders believe Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other state officials are wielding their law enforcement powers to target racial minorities and sideline political rivals.
Credit: Jianan Liu / HuffPost / Getty

Cecilia Castellano is a small-business owner and a relative political newcomer in South Texas.

A Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in a toss-up district, Castellano spends her days making the case for sending an outsider to Austin — and against her Republican opponent, Don McLaughlin Jr., who was endorsed by Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton even before his primary election.

Then, two weeks ago, law enforcement agents from Paxton’s office showed up around dawn at Castellano’s home outside San Antonio, armed with a search warrant and a flashlight they shined into her front window. She had answered the door in pajamas, and in the days since, she has found herself constantly checking the door.

“My son’s room was just a few feet away,” Castellano told HuffPost, still shaken two […]

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Trump rails against DOJ for indicting Russians for election interference

Stephan: 

Criminal Trump in my view is a traitor. I don’t know how he could make his treason any clearer. I don’t understand why corporate media video and print does not actively and openly tell the truth about him.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday angrily lashed out at the United States Department of Justice for indicting two Russian operatives for allegedly running an illegal foreign influence campaign.

During an appearance outside a courthouse in New York, Trump accused the DOJ of engaging in a conspiracy to undermine his chances in the 2024 election by implicating Russian operatives.

“This is a long and complicated web but it all goes back to the DOJ and Kamala and Sleepy Joe and all the rest of them,” Trump claimed without citing any evidence. “We have a whole rigged election system, nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s happening. Now I understand yesterday they’re bringing up Russia, Russia, Russia again that they’ve done for years.”

Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign engaged in a well-established influence campaign to tip the election to Trump. Although an investigation of the campaign did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russian operatives, it did find that members of Trump’s campaign were aware of and encouraged Russian assistance in getting their candidate elected.

Most infamously, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Russian operative in Trump Tower after they were promised damaging information about […]

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NASA astronaut who watched Earth from space for 178 days realized humanity is ‘living a lie’

Stephan: 

Here, from a vistor to space, is confirmation of what I have been telling your for decades. We live in a matrix of life that is interconnected and interdependent, and we must make fostering wellbeing at every level of the matrix of life if our planet is to be healthy. The astronauts can see this, but individual and corporate greed and the corruption of our politics seem to obscure this truth.

Astronaut Ronald Garan at the McAlister Auditorium at Tulane University, Louisiana. Credit: Erika Goldring / Getty

Geologists and researchers have long studied Earth’s unique features, offering insights into how humanity can improve living conditions. Most of their findings emphasize the importance of protecting our planet and promoting sustainability. But while Earth’s challenges are obvious to those who study it closely, astronauts see things from a much broader perspective. Former NASA astronaut Ron Garan, in an interview with Big Think, shared powerful insights from his view of Earth from space—one that offered a fresh perspective on the planet’s challenges.

Garan’s observations from space shifted the usual way we think about Earth. He began by highlighting that the view of the Earth from space makes things “undeniably clear.” What he mentioned next had people surprised. The former astronaut pointed out that problems such as deforestation, global warming, and climate change, which are seen as profoundly dangerous issues, are just “symptoms” of an underlying root problem. Garan […]

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The ‘Internet of Animals’ Could Transform What We Know About Wildlife

Stephan: 

More evidence that the matrix of life is interconnected and interdependent and that the evidence for that is growing year by year. Now will our political system recognize that reality and work to foster wellbeing? Will they do what the whole of humanity is dependent on? I doubt it, and that is why I think we are moving into a crisis we don’t acknowledge because of the corruption and greed that defines American society.

Elephants in Okambara, Namibia that have been tagged with transmitters to track their movements. Credit: Martin Wikelski

Field biologists tend to be a patient lot, often resigned to long days and weeks in the field and committed to experiments that take years to yield results. But even among that dogged crowd, Martin Wikelski stands out.

Back in 2001, sitting on a porch one evening in Panama, the German ornithologist had the germ of an idea for an “internet of animals,” a global system of sensor-wearing wildlife that would reveal the planet’s elusive, nonhuman worlds. He figured he could get it up and running by 2005. Nearly 20 years later, Wikelski may have finally succeeded — after surmounting roadblocks that range from bureaucratic mishaps to technical glitches to a geopolitical crisis. His space-based system, known as ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space), is now scheduled to launch, in its latest, satellite-based incarnation, on a private rocket sometime in 2025.

The underlying idea of the internet of animals is […]

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