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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
PEARL MARVELL, Contributing Writer - Yale Climate Connections
Stephan:
This article explains how you can foster social wellbeing by something you do. Change your bank to one that is not investing and supporting carbon energy. You can click through the article to find a list of banks that meet that standard. If enough people do this the carbon supporting banks will change their policies. This is how individual actions can change a society.
Credit: Pearl Marvell. Image credit: Samantha Harrington. Dollar bill vector image: by pch.vector on Freepik
I grew up knowing that when you had extra money, you put it under a bed, stashed it in a book or a clock, or, if there was enough of it, it went into a savings account at a bank.
It hadn’t occurred to me that my bank account could be contributing to the climate crisis until I learned that since the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015, 60 of the world’s largest banks have invested $5.5 trillion into the fossil fuel industry. And they’re using our money to do it.
When we deposit our paychecks, the money doesn’t just sit there. Generally, banking institutions will use our money for investments and loans to other individuals and businesses, including fossil fuel companies.
So I realized that one of the levers that I could pull to fight climate change would be to take my money out of banks that invest in fossil fuels. And I could use my skills as a journalist to figure out where […]
Edward Helmore / Associated Press ? Agence France-Presse, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
Peace amongst the developed Democratic nations has prevailed for 75 years since NATO was founded on 4 April 1949. But it is now under threat from criminal Trump. It began when he was President he worked against what is arguably one of the most important peace and mutual security treaties in history. He is actively trying to advance the interests of Vladimir Putin whom, I think he envies and models himself on. Sadly, the MAGAt world, most of whom have never lived except under the security of NATO do not seem to understand just how evil and dangerous to our national wellbeing Trump is.
Criminal Trump has been trying for years to damage NATO Credit: The Globe and Mail
Donald Trump has said he would “encourage” Russia to attack any of the US’s Nato allies whom he considers to have not met their financial obligations.
The Joe Biden White House immediately rebuked the former president’s comments, saying in a statement: “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged – and it endangers American national security, global stability, and our economy at home.”
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, also lambasted Trump’s comments. “Nato remains ready and able to defend all allies,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.
“Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk. I expect that regardless of who wins the presidential election the US will remain a strong and committed Nato ally.”
On the other hand, former Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he thought it was “right for a president to say to a […]
Evangelical religiosity in the United States has nothing to do with Christianity except the forms of the meetings, and the words they use. It is a racist fascist political cult that sees, criminal Trump as a new King David. It has nothing to do with Jesus, indeed, it violates almost every one of his teachings. The hypocrisy is so overwhelming that should make an actual Christian nauseous. As this article describes this is the most dangerous threat to democracy today.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson / The Daily Beast / Getty
I have watched every Donald Trump rally, interview, and speech since he left the White House in Jan. 2021.
It’s certainly been interesting to observe the evolution of his political messaging over that time—as he went from desperately trying to resuscitate his political image and career in 2021 following the Jan. 6 attack, to reclaiming his role of Republican kingmaker through his use of primary endorsements in 2022, to crafting his rally speeches and policy positions in 2023 in preparation for another presidential run while fending off indictments and financially crippling civil lawsuits.
Perhaps most interesting to me, though, is how his messaging with evangelical voters has changed so dramatically from his first campaign in 2016.
Trump’s rallies over the past year have followed a familiar pattern. After flying into the area on his 757, he makes a prearranged stop at a local diner, fast food restaurant, or pizza joint where a group of rabid Trump supporters arranged by his […]
Because of the Republican Party healthcare for women in the United States is third rate. We have the worst maternal mortality, the worst infant mortality in the developed world. If you are a woman in a Republican-controlled state just standard gynecological care can get tricky, and if you are pregnant your life may be at risk. What I don’t understand, and there is very little discussion about it in media, is how any woman can vote for Republicans, knowing she is potentially putting her life in danger. And yet they do by the millions.
Abortion rights activist Rachel Bailey (C) chants during an International Women’s Day abortion rights demonstration at the Texas State Capitol on March 08, 2023, in Austin, Texas. Credit: Brandon Bell / Getty
In 2023, a woman walked into a health centre in Houston trailing an IV pole. She was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum — essentially, an extreme form of morning sickness. The woman was vomiting constantly, could not retain food or fluids, and was being kept alive by being fed through a drip.
“She had been to the ER so many times,” family medicine provider and physician Bhavik Kumar told openDemocracy, “and she was so frail and thin that the ER sent her home with an IV pole. I’d never seen that before.”
The patient asked for an abortion, which affords rapid relief from hyperemesis gravidarum. Before the fall of Roe v Wade, which constitutionally protected the right to abortion, in 2022, Kumar could have provided that care in his outpatient clinic. But because Texas’s new near-total ban, he couldn’t help.
When asked what happened to the woman with the […]
ADAM KOTSKO, Professosr Shimer Great Books School at North Central College - Slate
Stephan:
For the past week after several weeks of research, I have been writing a research paper on the growing illiteracy of Americans. Here is some data from my paper:
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022
54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level
45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level
44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year
This is also the core of MAGAt world. America is becoming a shockingly ill-educated, illiterate, innumerate nation. Am I exaggerating? Here is what a college professor has to say on the subject.
Credit: Yuri Arcurs / iStock / Getty
Recent years have seen successive waves of book bans in Republican-controlled states, aimed at pulling any text with “woke” themes from classrooms and library shelves. Though the results sometimes seem farcical, as with the banning of Art Spiegelman’s Maus due to its inclusion of “cuss words” and explicit rodent nudity, the book-banning agenda is no laughing matter. Motivated by bigotry, it has already done demonstrable harm and promises to do more. But at the same time, the appropriate response is, in principle, simple. Named individuals have advanced explicit policies with clear goals and outcomes, and we can replace those individuals with people who want to reverse those policies. That is already beginning to happen in many places, and I hope those successes will continue until every banned book is restored.
If and when that happens, however, we will not be able to declare victory quite yet. Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving […]
Brett Wilkins , Staff Writer - truthout / Common Dreams
Stephan:
As the world centers on genocide in Gaza, and criminal invasion in Ukraine, climate change is gaining momentum and we are about to see major changes like the collapse of the Atlantic Current System, as this article describes. The United States, particularly, has been derelict in its response to the danger.
This image shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through December 2007. Credit: NASA
A study published Friday warned that a systemic collapse of the Atlantic Ocean currents driving warm water from the tropics toward Europe could be more likely than researchers previously estimated — an event that would send temperatures plummeting in much of the continent.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, could be headed for a relatively sudden shutdown that René Van Western, who led the Dutch study published in Science Advances, called “cliff-like.”
For many millennia, the Gulf Stream has carried warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico northward along the eastern North American seaboard and across the Atlantic to Europe. As human-caused global heating melts the Greenland ice sheet, massive quantities of fresh water are released into the North Atlantic, cooling the AMOC — which delivers the bulk of the Gulf Stream’s heat — toward a “tipping point” that could stop the current in its tracks.
An AMOC shutdown would cause temperatures to rise in the Southern […]
Here is a very complex warning, that I had not previously read about. It makes the fact-based assertion that just making the earth greener in color is not going to solve our problems; it may make some of them worse. This shows how complex it is to effectively deal with climate change, and how poorly humans seem to understand what needs to be done. This is what our politicians ought to be working on, not whether Joe Biden misspoke.
Despite this destruction, scientists keep coming to an odd conclusion: The Earth is growing greener. Not green in the metaphorical “sustainable” sense, but in the literal color green.
In the last four decades, the extent of green vegetation — i.e., the amount of leaves in a given area — has substantially increased across the planet, according to a number of recent scientific studies based on satellite data. There’s actually more green space today, not less. And this “global greening” phenomenon is not just occurring on land. Large parts of the oceans are getting greener, too, research shows. Our blue planet, it seems, is increasingly a green planet.
Understanding Earth’s color is key to understanding Earth and our future on it. “Greenness” often corresponds to the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide, […]
Here, amongst all the bad climate news, is some good news. A federal judge, as described in this report, has reversed a decision by criminal Trump and banned a weedkiller that has done terrible damage all over the United States. Never, ever buy a product manufactured by Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta, the makers of these weedkillers. These three companies knew very well how harmful their products were, but they put profit above wellbeing and made and sold them anyway.
A worker mixes herbicides, which will be sprayed on a field. Credit: David Bacon / Report Digital-REA / Redux)
Dealing a blow to three of the world’s biggest agrochemical companies, a US court this week banned three weedkillers widely used in American agriculture, finding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law in allowing them to be on the market.
The ruling is specific to three dicamba-based weedkillers manufactured by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, which have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm to endangered species and natural areas across the midwest and south.
This is the second time a federal court has banned these weedkillers since they were introduced for the 2017 growing season. In 2020, the ninth circuit court of appeals issued its own ban, but months later the Trump administration reapproved the weedkilling products, just one week before the presidential election at a press conference in the swing state of Georgia.
But a federal judge in Arizona ruled on Monday that the EPA made a crucial error in reapproving […]
