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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.
In MAGAt controlled states election workers, like the staff woman at the Arlington National Cemetery as well as individuals, particularly women, involved in the election system are being threatened. As this article describes, many are too frightened to complain about the harassment they have received. This is how fascism operates. Look at prime examples of racist fascism, Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton and how they are behaving in Texas that is a majority minority state. Only 40% of the population are White. They are using intimidation, as news report after news report is describing to stay in power.
Trump confidant Corey Lewandowski testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in September 2019 Credit: PBS NewsHour / YouTube
After President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump brought in a familiar face to help salvage his campaign: Corey Lewandowski. But the new Trump campaign chief is now facing a wave of scrutiny over his recent past.
A detailed Washington Post report shows that Lewandowski — who has been dogged by allegations of sexual harassment for years — is reigniting fear among the women who publicly accused him of battery and misconduct. One of those women is 35 year-old Trashelle Odom, who said Lewandowski made “multiple inappropriate, aggressive, violent and unwanted sexual comments” while sitting next to her at a 2021 charity dinner in Las Vegas.
Odom said that Lewandowski specifically boasted about the size of his genitalia and his sexual stamina and claimed his proximity to Trump gave him the ability to “destroy anyone.” The Post reported […]
Polio. This is what the Israeli genocide is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza. This is evil, and the United States is complicit in this because we are providing the weapons the Israelis are using. Write Kamala Harris please and tell her this must stop.
Medical workers are seen in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. Health care personnel in the besieged enclave are struggling to continue to support its population. Credit: Ashraf Amra / Anadolu / Getty
On Thursday, the United Nations announced a plan to try to address one of the most terrifying consequences of Israel’s U.S.-backed offensive war in the Gaza Strip: the return of the feared poliovirus to the Palestinian territory.
Health experts call the U.N. campaign a hugely important bid to protect hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza and to shield neighboring communities — but they are unsure whether it will work, as fighting between Israel and Gaza-based militant group Hamas continues.
Polio had been wiped out in Gaza as it has in much of the world, with its last case reported 25 years ago. Yet Israel’s military operation, which followed a Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, destroyed the area’s water and medical facilities and forced nearly 2 million people out of their homes. This created conditions in which […]
I find journalists covering this election hopelessly mediocre. As this article points out most of the corporate media continues to cover the election as a horeses-race contest between equals, which is egregiously incorrect. On one side we have a liar, convicted rapist, convicted felon, life-long business scammer. On the other we have a traditional public service fostering wellbeing politician. At this point if you are a criminal Trump voter you are a person who is willfully ignorant and not a supporter of continued democracy.
Donald Trump walks on stage to speak at the National Guard Association of the United States’ 146th General Conference, on Aug. 26, 2024, in Detroit. Credit: Carolyn Kaster / AP
OVER THE LAST few years, as it grew increasingly likely that Donald Trump would mount a third campaign for the White House, leading press critics and others in the media vowed that this time had to be different. The press couldn’t fail in its coverage of Trump once again.
This time, it must aggressively investigate Trump while focusing coverage on the threat that he poses to democracy. The stakes for the nation in the election, not just the odds of who was likely to win the campaign, should be front and center in the press coverage, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen argued.
But the change in coverage hasn’t happened. Instead, the press has doubled down on horse-race coverage, proving unable to alter its traditional formula for campaign coverage. Distracted by the campaign’s dramatic moments, highlighted by the attempted assassination of Trump and President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race, […]
This is a prime example of corporations choosing greed over the wellbeing of their customers. This is also a prime example of the corruption of Congress. This is what is wrong with the culture of the United States.
3M, a corporation headquartered in Minnesota, helped developed PFAS chemicals and is a member of the American Chemistry Council that pushes against their regulation. Credit: Michael Siluk / Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty
An industry-friendly research group has set forth plans to bolster legal challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s PFAS regulations for drinking water by conducting what experts say is biased research, The Guardian reported Tuesday.
Documents obtained by the newspaper show that the Ohio-based research group Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), led by controversial toxicologist Michael Dourson, aims to publish peer-reviewed papers by the end of 2024 that can help industry legal challenges to drinking water rules that the EPA finalized in April.
Dourson, some of whose research funding comes from industry groups, sent a fundraising email in July laying out his plans. “Can we count on your group to make a tax-deductible donation to get our team to publish a set of papers by the end of 2024?” he asked.
TERA organized a conference in October at which […]
Israel led by a fascist authoritarian, Benjamin Netanyahu, who like criminal Trump, cares for nothing but staying in power to avoid going to prison has led his country into committing genocide. And it is being made possible by the bombs and weapons the United States gives Israel. I hope Kamala Harris wins the Presidency, but she is as complicit in this genocide as Biden, and Trump before him have been. I believe historians in the future will see this as one of the great geopolitical errors in American history.
An aid truck crosses the Egypt-Gaza border in Rafah. Photograph: Mohamed Arafat/EPA
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said they carried out an airstrike on a humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza aimed at “armed assailants” trying to hijack it but the charity that organised the aid said people killed in the strike were employees of the transport company it was working with.
The convoy, organised by the US-based NGO Anera, was carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah on Thursday evening at the time of the attack. Its route had been coordinated in advance with the IDF, under a deconfliction process intended to prevent aid vehicles being bombed.
Anera’s Palestine country director, Sandra Rasheed, said: “This is a shocking incident. The convoy, which was coordinated by Anera and approved by Israeli authorities, included an Anera employee who was fortunately unharmed.
“Tragically, several individuals, all employed by the transportation company we work with, were killed in the attack. They were in the first vehicle of the convoy.”
Unconfirmed reports from Gaza said five people were killed in the airstrike.
Yet another sex scandal involving a fundamentalist mega church pastor. There are so many of these, I don’t usual cover them as individual events, but I am doing this story because there are so many of these scandals it is clearly a trend. Evangelicals pastors, like Roman Catholic priests, clearly have issues with their sexuality. The difference is priests are supposed to be celibate, whereas evangelical pastors are supposed to be faithful to their wives, or celibate if not married. Yet in both instances puritanical religiosity is unstainable, and these men pray on women, girls, and boys. These are not just sexual moves, they are power moves, using what is supposed to be their spiritual authority, to force sex on their religious followers.
Pastor Robert Morris, seen in a 2020 photo, resigned after a woman said he had abused her on multiple occasions in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12, according to a June 2024 statement. Credit: Alex Brandon / AP
Summer was off to a tumultuous start when allegations of child sexual abuse surfaced on a blog dedicated to Christian survivor stories. This time, the man involved had gone on to lead one of America’s largest megachurches.
Robert Morris, who founded and led Gateway Church for nearly 25 years in the affluent Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, Texas, resigned after the scandal came to light in June. His exit sent thousands of evangelicals into a season of struggle that has lasted months.
Last week, a pastor who oversaw all of Gateway’s campuses departed amid an undisclosed “moral issue,” becoming the latest in a series of changes for the church: The cancellation of its annual conference. The departure of Morris’ successor. The renaming of its Houston campus and […]
Fluoride has long been an issue as to its effects on health. But here is a new, and quite alarming report. Fluoride, it seems, lowers the IQ of children when they are exposed to twice the recommended limit, as many childrren are. I urge you to have your water tested. Pay close attention particularly to Fluoride, lead, and arsenic. If there is an issue with any of these have a water filter installed at the intake point where water comes into your house.Soft drinks, toothpaste, and mouth washes also contain fluoride. Our bodies need a little bit for bone health, but be very careful about fluoride, particularly with children.
Credit: Jim Cole / AP
A U.S. government report expected to stir debate concluded that fluoride in drinking water at twice the recommended limit is linked with lower IQ in children.
The report based on an analysis of previously published research, marks the first time a federal agency has determined — “with moderate confidence” — that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. While the report was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoride in drinking water alone, it is a striking acknowledgment of a potential neurological risk from high levels of fluoride.
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the CDC. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
“I think this (report) is crucial in our understanding” of this risk, said Ashley Malin, PhD, a University of Florida researcher who has studied the effect of higher fluoride […]
As you know from reading me I think AI is a very mixed bag. I can see how it could be helpful, I also see how it could, and has been, used in very negative ways spewing AI generated misinformation and fake porn to mention just two of the many damages AI is causing. California is the first state to really think the issue through by passing California’s SB 1047. The tech industry of course, which has profit as its only real priority, is furious and doing everything it can to sabotage such legislation. I think, we need national legislation, regulating this technology before it destroys our democracy and social wellbeing.
Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI Scientist, has warned that liability for mass casualties caused by AI will destroy the industry. Credit: Chesnot / Getty
If I build a car that is far more dangerous than other cars, don’t do any safety testing, release it, and it ultimately leads to people getting killed, I will probably be held liable and have to pay damages, if not criminal penalties.
If I build a search engine that (unlike Google) has as the first result for “how can I commit a mass murder” detailed instructions on how best to carry out a spree killing, and someone uses my search engine and follows the instructions, I likely won’t be held liable, thanks largely to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
So here’s a question: Is an AI assistant more like a car, where we can expect manufacturers to do safety testing or be liable if they get people killed? Or is it more like a search engine?
