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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 hope the Biden administration is successful in turning the bills they are sponsoring into laws and policy. Otherwise I am not sure we are going to survive as one country, and even if we do will we be one country. Trump has released the malignant dark Id of America. And it is trying to create a non-democratic racist society with a world view that is not based on facts and is not focused on fostering wellbeing.
Trump supporters at Stop the Steal rally outside Minnesota State Capitol. Credit: Chad Davis
There is the Big Lie — Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud that are driving all manner of anti-democratic beliefs and behavior. But that Big Lie is supported and reinforced by all the little lies that make it real. In a highly polarized society where one political party is attacking the foundations of democracy and the neofascist movement continues to grow, public opinion is no longer a basic matter of collective beliefs about matters of public concern. Public opinion is now a function of personal identity, existential core values and the understanding of reality itself.
As political scientists and other researchers have shown this dynamic is especially true for Republicans and other “conservatives.”
In that way, the Age of Trump and its aftermath resemble a science fiction dystopia where people exist in their own personal realities, through a type of experience machine that connects them to others who believe the same things — however untrue or fantastical […]
Luke Harding, Julian Borger and Dan Sabbagh, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: There are some issues around this story, but I think it is going to turn out to be essentially valid. Beyond the fact that Trump saw Putin as the leader he wanted to be, I think Putin had something on Trump. He was in Lenin's words "a useful idiot," and that is how the story is shaping up.
Putin and Trump
Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.
The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.
Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.
Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.
The Guardian has shown the documents to independent experts who say they appear to be genuine. Incidental details come across as accurate. The overall tone and […]
Steven Rosenfeld , Editor and Chief Correspondent of Voting Booth - the Independent Media Institute - AlterNet/ Independent Media Institute
Stephan: By now it should be clear to anyone that the Republican long-term tactic to take over the American judicial system, as part of a strategy to allow a racial minority to dominate the nation, is paying off.
Associate Supreme Court Justice
In recent decades, voting rights progress has consisted of expanding access to a ballot and the ways to cast it—such as online registration, voting from home with mailed-out ballots and other options to vote before Election Day. Those innovations have been widely embraced, especially during the 2020 election in response to health concerns during a pandemic. In the general election, 56 million people voted in a different manner than they had in 2016.
But the Supreme Court’s latest major decision on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has imposed new standards that election law scholars say are hostile to the more expansive and convenient voting options that have surfaced in recent years. Even more troubling, the court’s conservative majority has done so in a way that is reminiscent of the arguments put forth by last century’s opponents of equal voting opportunities for racial minorities.
Stephan: Today I got three anti-vaxxer emails, and I am disgusted. The politicization by Republicans of, and their spreading grotesque disinformation about what should have been a straightforward health issue is an act of brutal inhumanity that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. If you have been part of this you should be ashamed of yourself. There is a certain karma to it though. This militant willful ignorance has killed tens of thousands of Trumpers, evangelicals, and White racists.
Credit: Adobe.com
The coordinated and rapid COVID-19 vaccination campaign launched in the United States late last year has saved some 279,000 lives and prevented 1.25 million hospitalizations, a new study led by the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) finds.
These gains, however, could be swiftly reversed by the highly transmissible Delta variant, which has the potential to unleash a surge of new cases among the millions of people in the United States who remain unvaccinated.
“The vaccines have been strikingly successful in reducing the spread of the virus and saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States alone,” said lead author Alison Galvani, the Burnett and Stender Families Professor of Epidemiology and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at YSPH.
“Yet until a greater majority of Americans are vaccinated, many more people could still die from this virus. The danger is not over. Now is not the time to let down our guard,” she said.
The study is currently published by The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that promotes a more effective and […]
Josh Katz and Margot Sanger-Katz, - The New York Times
Stephan: While everyone has been focused on Covid, the opioid pandemic has drifted into obscurity. But it has not gone away; quite the opposite. This death crisis is the result, in my opinion, of the inferiority of the illness profit system. Other countries do not have death rates like this. And why does it happen?
You're broke, you lost your job, you've got two kids, You're down to electricity or food. You have no health insurance. Opiates give relief, you retreat into them because you feel powerless and see no options. This is a failure of America's social structure which makes profit the only priority. The healthcare bill Biden is trying to get passed will help, and I think opioid deaths will go down.
As Covid raged, so did the country’s other epidemic. Drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30 percent in 2020 to a record 93,000, according to preliminary statistics released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s the largest single-year increase recorded.
The deaths rose in every state but two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, with pronounced increases in the South and West.
Several grim records were set: the most drug overdose deaths in a year; the most deaths from opioid overdoses; the most overdose deaths from stimulants like methamphetamine; the most deaths from the deadly class of synthetic opioids known as fentanyls.
“It’s huge, it’s historic, it’s unheard of, unprecedented, and a real shame,” said Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies heroin markets. “It’s a complete shame.”
In recent years, annual drug overdose deaths had already eclipsed the peak yearly deaths from car crashes, gun violence or the AIDS epidemic.
The death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 375,000 last year, the largest American mortality event in a century, but drug deaths were […]
Stephan: Tonight I went to my island's school board meeting because it turns out we have a small but active White supremacy christofascist community, and they are doing the kind of things described in this article. It is, of course straight out of the Fascist playbook. We are in dangerous circumstances, and it is going to take massive pushback from people who support a society based on fostering wellbeing. Are you going to be part of it?
When Joe Makula decided to run for the board of the Niles-Maine Public Library in Niles, Illinois, this spring, a community member asked him how he thought the library could better serve the area’s increasingly diverse community.
Many were stunned by his response: “Instead of stocking up on books in seven different languages,” he said. “If we got people to assimilate and learn English, that would do more good.”
At the time of his candidacy, Makula was a known person in Niles, having previously led efforts to impose term limits on elected officials and stop the town mayor from filling vacant trustee positions, but his interest in the library was new. Elizabeth Lynch, a member of #SaveNilesLibrary, says that she does not know what provoked Makula’s involvement, but it quickly became apparent that his goal was “to object to the library being a community center.” He also opposed spending to repair the building’s aging roof and upgrade the facility to better bridge the digital divide separating low-income residents from their more affluent neighbors.
Stephan: Tennessee, about as poorly governed as any state in the union, run almost entirely by Republicans, has just done something so stupid I find it breathtaking. And it is very karmic. As a result of Tennessee Republican officials acting as they have, as described in this article, their policies are going to result in the death of some untold number of Tennessee youth. Good luck Tennessee voters, you got what you voted for.
Luke Allan, 13, closes his eyes as he gets a Covid-19 vaccination. The campaign to immunize America’s 17 million adolescents aged 12-to-15 kicked off in full force on May 13, a key part of President Joe Biden’s strategy to push the country close to herd immunity. Credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty
The Tennessee Department of Health is set to discontinue its outreach programs for vaccinations amongst adolescents, marking a decisive win for state Republicans who have repeatedly sowed vaccine hesitancy amongst residents of the state.
According to an internal report and leaked agency email obtained by the Tennessean, the department will halt all vaccine-related events at schools, which were previously used as coronavirus vaccine drives.
In a number of rural towns throughout the state, school gymnasiums are one of the few sites able to host indoor vaccine drives because they are air-conditioned and provide ample space for social distancing.
Additionally, the Tennessee Department of Health is now prohibited from sending teenagers postcards that remind them to receive their second dose. Instead, vaccine-related mail will be sent to their parents over fears that doing otherwise […]
Stephan: A few days ago I presented a piece on how the environment is altering radically as climate change gains momentum. Now, this. Nature is changing, the ecosystem of earth is undergoing a transformation. Each year from now on all of this is going to get worse. That is happening, even as Republican climate deniers in Congress and state legislatures blather on claiming humans have nothing to do with climate change, or this alteration in the earth's ecosystem. If it wasn't so tragic it would be satire.
Marine biologist Christopher Harley from the University of British Columbia says he has found hundreds of thousands of dead mussels on one beach alone. Credit: Christopher Harley/University of British Columbia
With the Pacific region hitting record-setting temperatures in the last few weeks, a new study from Canada shows the heat waves’ enormous impact on marine life:An estimated1 billion sea creatures on the coast of Vancouverhave died as a result of the heat, a researchersaid.
But that number is likely to be much higher, said professor Christopher Harley from the University of British Columbia.
“I’ve been working in the Pacific Northwest for most of the past 25 years, and I have not seen anything like this here,” he said. “This is far more extensive than anything I’ve ever seen.”
Harley reaches his estimates by counting the number of sea creatures, mostly mussels, in a section that he said is representative of an entire beach. He varies measuring some beaches that are rocky and some that are not to get a full estimate for the entire ecosystem.
