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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.
Stephan: I see this as a combination of willful ignorance amongst persons many of whom have overactive right amygdalas and a deliberate political disinformation campaign designed to manipulate them. What makes it so weird is that these people are doing this stupid thing even though many of them will get sick with Covid, and some will die.
At 412 Murrieta, an evangelical church in Southern California, the pastor has frequently preached against Covid-19 vaccines. Credit: WILL LESTER/SCNG/ZUMA PRESS
More than six months into the country’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign, evangelical Christians are more resistant to getting the vaccine than other major religious groups, according to newly released data.
Some 24% of white evangelicals said in June they wouldn’t be vaccinated, down from 26% in March, according to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that studies the intersection of religion and public life, and Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit focused on interfaith cooperation.
Evangelicals of all races make up about one-quarter of the U.S. population, and health officials say persuading them to get the shot is crucial to slowing the spread of the Delta variant fueling recent increases in Covid-19 cases.
The percentage of white evangelicals who say they have been vaccinated or plan to get the shot as soon as possible was 56% in June, up from 45% in March. That is tied for the lowest figure among groups included in the survey, along with Hispanic protestants, […]
MARK SCHLOSBERG, Organizing Co-Director for Food & Water Action - Common Dreams
Stephan: The American form of industrial chemical monoculture agriculture and animal husbandry is sabotaging the environment and must change. Here are the facts.
We need to break this vicious cycle of factory farms polluting water and driving climate change, which causes water crises for people and the environment. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty
“No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” Victor Hugo once said. The time for the Farm System Reform Act is now. We can’t afford to continue the downward spiral from an unsustainable food system. Here’s how we must change it.
Wildfires, heatwaves, hurricanes and droughts: the deadly impacts of climate change are becoming more intense and devastating. While the transition to a real, renewable energy system is imperative to a livable climate future, it’s just as urgent to address the destructive impacts of our industrial food system. The current system is highly concentrated and exploitative, and it’s driving climate change and water shortages.
The first step is passing the Farm System Reform Act.
To address the climate crisis we must break up the big food monopolies and stop the practice of concentrating large numbers of animals on factory farms. The first step is passing the Farm System Reform Act.
Stephan: I have warned my readers, again and again, pay attention to what the insurance industry is doing. Get out before they stop insuring because property values are going to crash.
Credit:Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times/Getty
Stu Smith got an email from his insurance company last summer with some bad news: His premium was more than quadrupling.
Smith is the co-owner of Smith Madrone, a wine operation in the mountains of California’s Sonoma Valley, and he had held a wildfire insurance policy with the company for more than 30 years. Now, though, the insurer had decided Smith’s property was too risky to keep on its customer rolls at anything close to its longtime price. If Smith wanted to renew his policy, he would have to pay annual premiums of more than $55,000, up from just $12,000 the year before.
The following week, as the LNU Lightning Complex Fire began to spread in the hills just east of Sonoma County, Smith scrambled to find a new insurance company. No private insurer seemed willing to issue him a policy, so at the last moment, he resorted to a state-run insurance plan that covered a portion of his property. The price was still orders of magnitude greater than what he’d […]
Nina Lakhani, Aliya Uteuova and Alvin Chang, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Did you realize that if you are a typical American 80% of all the food items you buy in your local market and feed your family are owned by a tiny group of corporations? They package them in different boxes, and ostensibly they are produced by many companies but that is a charade. Those thousands of companies are, in fact, owned by less than a dozen meta-corporations. Read this article, and click through to see the many charts, they will appall you. Americans have no idea what a stranglehold these corporations have on their lives.
A whopping 93% of the sodas Americans drink arre owned by just three companies
A handful of powerful companies control the majority market share of almost 80% of dozens of grocery items bought regularly by ordinary Americans, new analysis reveals.
A joint investigation by the Guardian and Food and Water Watch found that consumer choice is largely an illusion – despite supermarket shelves and fridges brimming with different brands.
In fact, a few powerful transnational companies dominate every link of the food supply chain: from seeds and fertilizers to slaughterhouses and supermarkets to cereals and beers.
The size, power and profits of these mega companies have expanded thanks to political lobbying and weak regulation which enabled a wave of unchecked mergers and acquisitions. This matters because the size and influence of these mega-companies enables them to largely dictate what America’s 2 million farmers grow and how much they are paid, as well as what consumers eat and how much our groceries cost.
It also means those who harvest, pack and sell us our food have the least power: at least half of the […]
Stephan: Tonight I went to hear a charity concert where a dear friend of mine performed and, while I was there, I spoke with another retired friend. When I asked him how he was doing he told me he and his wife are under a lot of stress because. their one car keeps breaking down and since they live on their joint social security they not sure they can buy even a cheap used car. Then I came home and read this story.
America's wealth inequality is obscene, gross, and glaring, one in seven families are in poverty, and yet the American tax laws, which are the source of the problem, are unaddressed by the President and Congress, and the disparity is getting worse each year.
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos has offered Nasa $2 billion in exchange for a contract to allow astronauts to land on the moon.
The Amazon founder made his offer to administrator Bill Nelson in an open letter on Monday, a week after his own historic rocket launch.
Billionaire Bezos wrote: “Blue Origin is committed to building a future where millions of people live and work in space to benefit the Earth.
“We are convinced that, to advance America’s future in space, NASA must now quickly and assuredly return to the Moon. This is why Blue Origin answered NASA’s urgent call to develop a Human Landing System.
“I believe this mission is important. I am honored to offer these contributions and am grateful to be in a financial position to be able to do so.
“This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments.”
SPACEX CHOSEN
In April this year Nasa chose Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build the lunar lander that will eventually put the first woman and person of color on the moon.
Stephan: Here is another proof of my Thereom of Wellbeing. Moving out of the carbon era will produce millions of good-paying jobs. As the article says, "Currently, an estimated 18 million people work in the energy industries—a number that is likely to increase, not decrease, to 26 million if we reach our global climate targets."
The carbon industries, of course, are bribing every member of Congress they can to protect their interests, and whores like Joe Manchin are only too happy to take their dollars. They also invest heavily in those industries. Just look at Texas: Fourteen Texas representatives and one senator, Republican Ted Cruz, have between $14.5 million and $35 million invested in the oil, gas, and coal industries.
PALM SPRINGS, CA – Giant wind turbines are powered by strong winds in front of solar panels on March 27, 2013 in Palm Springs, California. According to reports, California continues to lead the nation in green technology and has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per capita, even with a growing economy and population. Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty
Critics of a shift to a post-carbon economy often claim that a fossil fuel phase-out would leave millions of people unemployed. And while millions of fossil fuel industry jobs would indeed be lost under a robust climate policy, a study published Friday shows that overall energy sector employment would actually increase by over 40% by 2050 due to gains in renewable energy jobs.
“While fossil fuel jobs, particularly extraction jobs, which constitute 80% of current fossil fuel jobs, would rapidly decline, these losses would be more than compensated by gains in solar and wind jobs.” —Study
The study—conducted by the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment in collaboration with researchers from the University of British Columbia and Chalmers University of […]
Stephan: Here is some potentially very good news, and important news as the earth's temperatures rise because of human greed and stupidity.
Cooling Chip
It goes without saying, cooling technologies like air conditioners, freezers, and refrigerators have significantly improved our lives over the last few decades. But the chemicals underlying these technologies have also proved to be very detrimental to the environment, harming the ozone layer and polluting water sources.
The good news is that, in recent years, scientists have been hard at work improving the devices that keep us, and the things we consume, cool. One of the most promising of these technologies comes from Phononic, a startup based in Durham, North Carolina, which has been using a material called bismuth telluride to make ‘cooling chips.’
As reported by Euronews, these chips can be as small as a fraction of a fingernail or as big as a fist depending on how many coolants are needed. When electricity runs through the chips, the current takes heat with it, cooling one side of the chip while heating the other one up, explains Tony Atti, the startup’s co-founder.
So far, the cooling chips have been used to manufacture compact freezers for vaccine transportation and for ice cream at convenience stores. A more recent use […]
Stephan: The development of this grift was inevitable and utterly predictable. Freedom of Speech does not extend to propagating disinformation that can harm a person's, or a population's wellbeing. But the Congress has been unwilling to create law requiring factual accuracy. That failure assured digital mercenaries would arise. Nations with hostile intentions towards another nation, create and hire such people, and corporations, or rich individuals or groups use them as well. This disinformation seeks to cripple us in some way because it is being created to further an agenda, not foster wellbeing.
Doing SR, finding reliable sources, has become much more difficult.
Empty vaccine vials at a vaccination site near Munich in May. Online disinformation campaigns targeting everything from vaccine manufacturers to elections have become a booming business. Credit: Matthias Schrader/Associated Press
In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.
A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.
But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.
Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence […]
