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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.
Amy Maxmen / KFF Health, KFF Staff Writer - truthdig | Kaiser Family Foundation
Stephan:
We may be on the verge of a new pandemic, as this report from the Kaiser Family Foundation reports. What it also makes clear is that once again the American public’s interest has been sacrificed on the altar of greed. We simply seem to be a country that is incapable of making the fostering of social and individual wellbeing a priority. Greed and corruption always seem to define what happens in America.
Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.
But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy workers pumped gallons of electrolyte-rich fluids into ailing cows through metal tubes inserted into the esophagus.
“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.
Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 875 herds across 16 states have tested positive.
Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain […]
As I enjoy the Christmas holiday with my wife, daughter and grandson, I have thought about the misery of the rising number of homeless people in the United States, and the cruelty of American communities. Imagine the number of decent living quarters that could be built if the uber-rich actually paid their fair share of taxes. If the governments we elected actually felt fostering wellbeing was important think how different our world would be. Every vote is a choice each of us makes.
A man walks past a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Jae C. Hong / AP
The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, federal officials said Friday.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said federally required tallies taken across the country in January found that more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless — a number that misses some people and does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.
That increase comes on top of a 12% increase in 2023, which HUD blamed on soaring rents and the end of pandemic assistance. The 2023 increase also was driven by people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The numbers overall represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S., with Black people being overrepresented among the homeless population.
“No American should face homelessness, and the Biden-Harris Administration is committed […]
This is more technical than I usually run in SR but it is a special kind of good health news. If you or anyone you know has rectal cancer this may be important. If that is an issue give it to your physician or give it to them to give to their physician.
Designation based on data showing no evidence of disease in 100% of all 42 patients who completed treatment with dostarlimab
Breakthrough Therapy Designation granted to drugs with potential to show improvement over available therapies for serious conditions
Current standard of care can be associated with significant negative quality-of-life effects, highlighting the need for new options
GSK plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Jemperli (dostarlimab) for the treatment of patients with locally advanced mismatch repair deficient (dMMR)/microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) rectal cancer. The Breakthrough Therapy Designation aims to expedite the development and review of drugs with the potential to treat a serious condition and where preliminary clinical evidence may indicate substantial improvement over currently available therapy.1 This is the second regulatory designation for dostarlimab in locally advanced dMMR/MSI-H rectal cancer, following Fast Track designation for the same patient population in January 2023.2
Hesham Abdullah, Senior Vice President, Global Head Oncology, R&D, GSK, said: “Today’s designation, which is based on the unprecedented 100% clinical complete response rate of dostarlimab reported to date, supports a path to help change the treatment paradigm for patients with […]
Part of the manifestation of humanity’s precognition is the hysterical fear a growing number of men have about women. Part of it is, I think, that there is no other way to incarnate except through the body of a woman, and these men unconsciously realize if there is a subordinate gender it is male. So they seek control of their superiors. This insanity is shaping multiple human societies including our own as this article describes.
Afghanistan women have been forbidden to speak or even laugh in public Credit: Getty
From Iraq to Afghanistan to the US, basic freedoms for women are being eroded as governments start rolling back existing laws.
Just a few months ago a ban on Afghan women speaking in public was the latest measure introduced by the Taliban, who took back control of the country in 2021. From August the ban included singing, reading aloud, reciting poetry and even laughing outside their homes.
The Taliban’s ministry for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice, which implements one of the most radical interpretations of Islamic law, enforces these rules. They are part of a broader set of “vice and virtue” laws that severely restrict women’s rights and freedoms. Women are even banned from reading the Quran out loud to other women in public.
In the past three years in Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken away many basic rights from women who live there, so that there’s very little that they are allowed to do.
I am publishing only one story in today’s SR edition. It is a research paper I have just published in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. I have decided to do this because I think this paper explains the existential trend that is shaping the behavior and attitudes of humanity.
Since 1972 when I was appointed by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to the Secretary of Defense-MIT Study Group on Innovation, Technology, and the Future, I have been studying what is happening in the news, looking for trends. In 1991 I began publishing online the daily Schwartzreport, and since 2005 I have been researching these papers for each issue of Explore in both of which I track trends thatare shaping our future. Even longer, since the late 1960s, I have been an experimentalist studying the nature of consciousness, particularly non-physiologically based, nonlocal consciousness. I go into this bit of bio because these parallel paths in my life have made me recognize a trend that media, politicians, and most people neither mention or even notice: a precognition that is shaping humanity’s future.
Let me begin with the United States. If you look at the Project 2025 book, several of whose authors now hold high positions in the current administration, it is easy to see this is the blueprint now guiding the United States. This is a book […]
Richard Wike , Moira Fagan and Laura Clancy, Research Staff - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
Here is a report on elections across the globe. Note the trends. It is my opinion that the economic issues and the cultural ones are actually not the causes but manifestations of a deeper existential issue, a humanity wide precognition of the climate change catastrophe that is growing and that is going to change civilizations across the world.
In one of the year’s highest-profile elections, Democrats in the United States lost the presidency, with Donald Trump, the Republican former president, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris. Republicans also won majorities in both houses of Congress.
It was the third straight U.S. presidential election in which the incumbent party lost. And it was one of many notable losses for […]
Fascism is our new reality brought on by a level of explicit corruption of the American government never before seen in the last 250 years. The oligarchs have openly bought Trump, and the Republican Party, and Project 2025 is what they have in mind for you and me. This was not imposed on us, forty-eight percent of voters — not even a majority — chose it. Now 100 percent of us will have to live with it.
Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg (left), and Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, gave $1m each. Credit: Getty
US business leaders are spending big on Donald Trump’s second inaugural fund, which is predicted to exceed even the record-setting $107m raised in 2017.
The donations, which are not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries and business leaders seek to curry favor with the incoming administration after the president-elect decisively won a second, non-consecutive term in November.
Some of the planned donationsreportedly include $1m each from Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg.
Hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin has said he plans to donate $1m, Bloomberg reported; Uber and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi are reported to be chipping in $1m each; and Toyota, Ford and General Motors are each peeling off $1m. Ford is also reportedly coupling its donation with a fleet of vehicles.
“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Thursday.
Many senior executives in US industries and finance have already made the trip to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s transition team headquarters, or are planning […]
Donald Trump and I met in New York at a charity function arranged by Gloria Vanderbilt when he was about 20 and I was about 24. We began talking because as we stood at the bar he noticed that like himself I had asked the bartender for iced sparkly water with a lime slice in it. He introduced himself and when I asked him what he did, he said, “My father and I are the biggest real estate developers in the city.” Talking to him he came across to me as a sleazy self-important nouveau riche. A very pretty busty girl walked past us and he excused himself and walked after her. As I stood there watching him approach the young woman, Mrs. Vanderbilt came up to me with my friend Sam Green, who had arranged for my invitation while I was staying with him in the city. I asked her, “Who is Donald Trump?” She replied, “He and his father desperately want to be accepted into society.” Then she smiled adding, “It will never happen.” As it has developed she was right, and Trump is even sleazier than I had originally assessed him. I see him today like a nasty cartoon figure from a Batman movie, and am amazed and saddened by the fact that the media either doesn’t see him as he is or is afraid to profile him accurately. Read this and think about how you would assess such a person if you met him, as I did, at a charity function. Oh, and did I mention he wants you to pay him $100,000 if you want him to go to church with you?
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press, at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 26, 2024. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
President-elect Donald Trump is using the holiday season to further enrich himself by hawking a wide array of Christmas merchandise that has left at least one ethics expert aghast.
As the Washington Post reports, Trump-branded Christmas merchandise on sale this year includes a $38 Trump Advent calendar, a $95 Mar-a-Lago bauble, $22 candy cane Trump socks, an $86 “GIANT Trump Chocolate Gold Bar” and a $28 Trump apron that features Santa Claus waving an American flag.
What makes this cash-out particularly noteworthy is that Trump isn’t even making a pretense about sending the proceeds to charity, but is rather pocketing the money for the Trump Organization.
“As the company encouraged customers to celebrate the holidays with Trump gifts for all ages, President-elect Donald Trump personally profited off of his upcoming term in a manner that is unprecedented in modern history — even during his unconventional first stint in the White House,” reports […]
