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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 am really tired of the stupidity and nastiness of the anti-choice people. And with the present Supreme Court, we may soon be headed back to the 1950s when ending an unwanted or medically harmful pregnancy was a major crisis that could cost a woman her life. And you may be sure that if Roe is overturned that illegal abortionists will emerge. I knew two women in the 1950s and early 60s who got kitchen abortions as they were called then, and almost died from Septicemia. I make this prediction with absolute certainty. In addition to making women a subordinate class of humans, what Mississippi and other Red states are trying to do is going to kill thousands of women, as well as their fetuses. The data is irrefutable on this, not just in the U.S. but in other benighted nations. When pregnancy termination is not legally available an illegal version emerges.
Pro-choice women demonstrate in Texas
Mississippi’s attorney general urged the Supreme Court in a Thursday brief to overrule Roe v. Wade next term when the justices review Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Calling the court’s precedent on abortion “egregiously wrong,” Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) explicitly set the dispute over Mississippi’s restrictive law on a collision course with the landmark 1973 decision in Roe that first articulated the constitutional right to abortion.
“This Court should overrule Roe and Casey,” Fitch wrote, referring also to the court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong. They have proven hopelessly unworkable. … And nothing but a full break from those cases can stem the harms they have caused.”
Supreme Court precedent tracing back to Roe prohibits states from banning abortion before fetal viability, which occurs around 24 weeks. The Mississippi law to be reviewed during the court’s upcoming term, which begins in October, creates only narrow exceptions from its 15-week ban.
“The court cannot uphold this law in Mississippi without overturning Roe’s core holding,” Nancy […]
Stephan: The U.S., I think, is being outplayed by China. SR has been following the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative since it began, and my take is the Chinese are building both economic and geopolitical infrastructure that is going to replace American dominance and influence in those regions o the world. The U.S. offers wars, the Chinese are offering economic development and trading opportunities.
When China’s party and state leader Xi Jinping first announced his plan for a “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” in the fall of 2013, the concept sounded vague and its content was difficult to interpret. While this remains true in many respects, the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” as the overall policy is now called, has since been fleshed out somewhat in two policy documents. In these documents, the Chinese authorities define broad and very ambitious goals: Beijing wants to connect participating countries’ infrastructure, but also encourage them to open their markets to China and facilitate trade, to link their financial markets to China’s, to strengthen societal (“people-to-people”) relations, and even align their overall economic development policies with China’s. Projects on the ground are the best indicator for how Beijing aims to achieve these goals.
Since the launch of the project, China has invested more than 100 billion USD into BRI-related infrastructure projects according to the MERICS BRI database. Not included are projects still under construction or in the planning phase, which involve […]
Stephan: The countries in the Middle East that essentially deserts have lots of money from oil, and are beginning to realize that climate change with the increased temperatures it brings, as well as the water issues it promises, is going to have an enormous impact on their countries, and they are getting very creative in coming up with ways to help them.
Scientists in the United Arab Emirates have turned to using drones to create rain. Pictured, the Dubai skyline at night, Credit: Rustam Azmi/Getty
Scientists in the United Arab Emirates are working towards new methods of weather manipulation in an attempt to bring increased rainfall to the desert country—and so far, it appears the efforts have been successful.
The cloud seeding operation, which uses electrical charges to prompt rainfall, speaks to the growing interest globally in rainmaking technologies as an avenue for potentially mitigating drought.
According to The Independent, the cloud seeding method employed in Dubai relies on drone technology. The drones release an electrical charge into clouds, prompting them to coalesce and create rain. The technology is reportedly favored compared to other forms of cloud seeding because it uses electricity to generate rain rather than chemicals.
The Middle Eastern country receives an average of four inches of rain per year and summer temperatures that routinely surpass 120 degrees, reported the news outlet. Additionally, its sinking water table—an essential source of fresh water—poses a serious threat. As a result, in 2017, the UAE […]
Stephan: Here, finally, is some good news concerning America's obsessive gun psychosis. There is going to be an increase in research funding. Bravo.
A young person holds a rifle at an annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Dallas, Texas.Credit: Ashley Gilbertson/NYT/Redux/eyevine
Maeve Wallace has studied maternal health in the United States for more than a decade, and a grim statistic haunts her. Five years ago, she published a study showing that being pregnant or recently having had a baby nearly doubles a woman’s risk of being killed1. More than half of the homicides she tracked, using data from 37 states, were perpetrated with a gun.
In March 2020, she saw something she hadn’t seen before: a funding opportunity from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study deaths and injuries from gun violence. She had mentioned firearms in her studies before. But knowing that the topic is politically fraught, she often tucked related terms and findings deep within her papers and proposals. This time, she says, she felt emboldened to focus on guns specifically, and to ask whether policies that restrict firearms for people convicted of domestic violence would reduce the death rate for new and […]
Stephan: Most of Europe is committed to having only EV vehicles on their roads by 2040-2045, and the corporations have gotten the message. Here is the latest corporate announcement, and I consider it all good news.
Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler plans to invest more than 40 billion euros, or $47 billion, between 2022 and 2030 to develop battery-electric vehicles, and be ready for an all-electric car market by 2030.
Outlining its strategy for an electric future, the German luxury carmaker said on Thursday it would, with partners, build eight battery plants as it ramps up EV production, and that from 2025 all new vehicle platforms would only make electric cars.
“We really want to go for it … and be dominantly, if not all electric, by the end of the decade,” Chief Executive Ola Källenius told Reuters, adding that spending on traditional combustion-engine technology would be “close to zero” by 2025.
However, Daimler stopped short of giving a hard deadline for ending sales of fossil-fuel cars.
Some carmakers like Geely-owned Volvo Cars have committed to going all electric by 2030, while General Motors says it aspires to be fully electric by 2035.
“We need to move the debate away from when you build the last combustion engine because it’s not relevant,” Källenius said. “The question is how quickly can you scale up to being close to 100 percent electric and that’s what we’re focusing on.”
Stephan: Water is destiny, and here is an aspect of what that means that has gotten very little coverage until now. That will be changing as the lights go out. This is another example of how California is being increasingly impacted by climate change.
Houseboats sit anchored at the Bidwell Canyon Marina on Lake Oroville on June 1 in Oroville, Calif. As water levels continue to fall amid a historic drought, state officials say a hydroelectric power plant that relies on the lake will be forced to shut down this summer. Credit: Justin Sullivan Getty
A California power plant likely will shut down for the first time ever because of low water during a prolonged drought, squeezing the state’s very tight electricity supplies, state officials said yesterday.
The Edward Hyatt power plant, an underground facility next to Oroville Dam in Butte County, is expected to close in August or September, said John Yarbrough, California Department of Water Resources assistant deputy director of the State Water Project. The plant has run continuously since opening in 1967. It receives water from Lake Oroville, and that reservoir has dropped because of the drought, as CNN previously reported.
Lake Oroville is among several California reservoirs hit by drought.
In addition, “high heat events in California and the rest of the West have begun earlier than usual and have […]
Stephan: You may well have heard the canard about EVs, not really being cleaner than petroleum-powered vehicles. It isn't true and here are some facts.
Vehicle bodies on the production line of the manufacturing plant for Zeekr Co., an electric-car unit of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Credit: Gilles Sabrie/Bloomberg/Getty
A new study lays to rest the tired argument that electric vehicles aren’t much cleaner than internal combustion vehicles. Over the life cycle of an EV — from digging up the materials needed to build it to eventually laying the car to rest — it will release fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a gas-powered car, the research found. That holds true globally, whether an EV plugs into a grid in Europe with a larger share of renewables, or a grid in India that still relies heavily on coal.
This shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis. So governments from California to the European Union have proposed phasing out internal combustion engines by 2035. But there are still peoplewho claimthat EVs are only as clean as the grids they run on — and right now, fossil fuels still dominate when […]
Stephan: The Republican Party is entirely committed to a fascist agenda. Republicans do not like democracy and are doing everything they can to sabotage it. Why aren't people out in the streets by the millions, why do people in the Red value states vote over and over for people who hold them in contempt? I don't know the answer to those questions, but I do know that democracy in the United States hangs by a thread. Here is the latest action by the fascists.
Medical care demonstrators in Washington
The Republicans who lead Idaho’s Legislature spent more than two years smarting over the passage of a 2018 ballot initiative that forced the state to expand Medicaid. They were also plotting their revenge.
This spring, as the lawmakers worried about a looming proposal to legalize medical marijuana, they passed a bill instituting an aggressive new standard on ballot campaigns. The outcry was fierce, with liberal activists quickly gathering 16,000 signatures from residents opposed to the legislation — including from rural counties the lawmakers said they were trying to help. Former state Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones delivered the petition to Republican Gov. Brad Little.
But Little was unmoved and signed the legislation in April, making Idaho home to some of the nation’s most restrictive requirements for ballot petitions. Organizers there are now required to secure signatures from 6 percent of voters in all 35 legislative districts in the state to get a question on the ballot for voters to decide.
The Idaho bill is part of a wave of legislation moving through GOP-controlled legislatures that’s […]
