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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 have been writing about what I call The Great Schism Trend for a decade, but this trend has taken a turn I did not think we would get to. Recently I have done story after story about how the Republican Party at the state level is trying to gut democracy, keeping the form, but not the substance. Doing this through surgically targeted voter suppression and gerrymandering. I confess that a part of me feels the voters in those states have gotten what they voted for.
But now there is this. At the same time as Republican-controlled states are moving to authoritarian fascism, states controlled by Democrats are going in the opposite direction; they are making voting more universal and fair. Wonderful good news.
The result of all this is that if you live in a Republican-controlled state you will no longer live in a democracy, but if you live in a Democrat-controlled state democracy is not only supported but thriving.
Can a nation endure when part of it is fascist and part of it is democratic? I guess we are going to find out because the U.S. government at the federal level is constipated to the point of dysfunction. The obvious thing to do would be to pass universal federal election rules that overrule all the state fascist nonsense, and that support ease of voting, and a voting environment where there is a high probability that any voter who wishes to vote can do so. But the Democrats can't seem to figure out how to do that in the face of a Republican Party that won't even talk about the issue.
Voting in Las Vegas on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. Nevada permanently adopted universal mail voting this year. Credit: John Locher/AP
More than half of U.S. states have lowered somebarriers to voting since the 2020 election, making permanent practices that helped produce record voter turnout during the coronavirus pandemic — a striking countertrend to the passage this year of restrictions in key Republican-controlled states.
New laws in states from Vermont to California expand access to the voting process on a number of fronts, such as offering more options for early and mail voting, protecting mail ballots from being improperly rejected and making registering to vote easier.
Some states restored voting rights to people with past felony convictions or expanded options for voters with disabilities, two long-standing priorities among voting advocates. And in Virginia, a new law requires localities to receive preapproval or feedback on voting changesas a shield against racial discrimination, a first for states after the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the federal Voting Rights Act in 2013.
The push to make voting easier aroundthe country comes even as
Stephan: This is what fascism looks like. Ostensibly, this is a regulation to assure diversity but, in fact, this is going to turn out to be a Republican way of assuring White supremacy continues unchallenged. This is part of the Critical Race Theory nonsense conspiracy. Let me give you some facts not a single public school in America even acknowledges let only teaches. A majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and nearly half of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention owned slaves. Four of the first five presidents of the United States were slaveowners. If we can't tell ourselves the truth about our founding, and you have the kind of hysteria that now consumes so many school boards what we will end up with is an increasingly ignorant population; one easily manipulated by emotional buzz words.
Police create a barrier between a group of protesters and Kaitlin Bennett, a gun rights advocate who hosts the Liberty Hangout show during her visit to the University of South Florida campus on Oct. 7, 2020, in Tampa. Credit: LUIS SANTANA | Times
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — In his continued push against the “indoctrination” of students, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed legislation that will require public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints to support “intellectual diversity.
The survey will discern “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” in public universities and colleges, and seeks to find whether students, faculty and staff “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,” according to the bill.
The measure, which goes into effect July 1, does not specify what will be done with the survey results. But DeSantis and Sen. Ray Rodrigues, the sponsor of the bill, suggested on Tuesday that budget cuts could be looming if universities and colleges are found to […]
Stephan: These days I often feel like I am publishing SR (obviously not on the internet) sometime in 1860 as the momentum for the Civil War was building up. And it is particularly scary because the armed forces and law enforcement are deeply compromised by White supremacists and QANON supporters amongst their numbers.
A FLAG FOR THE QANON CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FLOWN WITH OTHER RIGHT WING FLAGS DURING A PRO-TRUMP RALLY ON OCTOBER 11, 2020 IN RONKONKOMA, NEW YORK CREDIT: STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY
After 15 hours on his feet protecting the attendees at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Robert Patrick Lewis was tired.
But then the former Army sergeant, who did two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, heard disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn speak. Flynn, who himself took the QAnon pledge and has become part celebrity and part spiritual leader to the QAnon faithful, called for a military coup in the U.S., and suddenly he felt invigorated.
So he fired up a YouTube livestream and spoke straight to camera: “We need to talk about a revolution.”
Lewis is a full-fledged QAnon believer and founder of the 1st Amendment Praetorians, named after the elite Roman soldiers who protected the emperor. The group consists of former military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel whose stated mission is to provide pro bono security for “patriotic and religious events across the country.”
Stephan: The Republican Party at the state and local level is carrying out a slow motion coup seeking to dismantle the substance of our democracy, and assure that they will stay in power even as they become a smaller and smaller minority.
Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey arrives for a news conference to talk about the latest Arizona COVID-19 information in Phoenix on Dec. 2, 2020. Credit: Ross D. Franklin/AP
Mayors and city councils across Arizona issued face mask mandates during the pandemic to prevent the spread of Covid-19, angering conservative state lawmakers who decried government overreach. So the legislators turned to the newest Republican playbook and passed a law allowing businesses to ignore those public health requirements.
The one-line “preemption” law signed in April by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who refused to issue a statewide mask order, won’t make much of an immediate difference now. It doesn’t go into effect until later this year, and local officials have lifted mask mandates in compliance with CDC guidelines as the threat of the virus subsides.
“Next year, if a liberal town … imposes a mask mandate again on businesses throughout the community because of a bad flu virus or the sniffles, everybody would have to abide,” said state Rep. Joseph Chaplik, a freshman lawmaker who is skeptical of the science showing masks help […]
Stephan: I agree with this. Ecocide should become a crime, and it should be possible to charge the officers of corporations and the corporations themselves with this crime. When profit is the only social priority loss of wealth and personal freedom is the only remedy.
AN AERIAL VIEW OF CATTLE SUFFERING DURING DROUGHT IN OROMIA, IN ETHIOPIA Credit: ERIC LAFFORGUE/ART/CORBIS/GETTY
Powerful individuals behind the most devastating assaults on the environment could be put in the dock under a new legal definition of “ecocide” that a heavyweight panel of international lawyers and hardened campaigners hope will revolutionise the fight against the climate crisis.
The aim is to treat ecocide – the mass destruction of the environment – like genocide, crimes against humanity and other atrocities of international standing, holding world leaders and corporate chiefs criminally responsible for ecological disasters. With the world teetering on the brink of climate catastrophe, the expert panel is poised to publish its core text defining the draft law on Tuesday, following months of debate and deliberation.
While the panel’s members have kept details of the proposed, highly-anticipated law under wraps, a leader of the ecocide campaign has given the strongest hint yet of its text and the bold principle that underpins it: “200 words to protect the future of life on Earth”.
“The idea is for it to be a no-brainer,” Jojo Mehta, chair of the […]
Stephan: I see this as an alarming trend. I understand why it is happening, and it is completely predictable but still very scary. Blacks, particularly women, as this report describes, are exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, buying guns and training how to use them. Next, there will be Black militias protecting their neighborhoods, which will lead to more Black-police violence. Then there will be violence between White and Black militias. This is where America's gun insanity is heading. Predictable but lethal, and it is going to drive the White supremacist christofascists wild.
Michelle Tigner, 25, is an Army veteran who began carrying a gun as part of her job as a military intelligence officer. Credit: Marchelle Tigner
Robin Armstrong said she’s had a phobia of guns since her brother was fatally shot, but that hasn’t stopped her from buying a Springfield XD nine-millimeter handgun.”I’m practicing as much as I can, and I’m just trying not to be nervous around it,” said Armstrong, who plans to buy two more firearms: an AR-15 rifle and a smaller handgun she can carry concealed.Armstrong, who is Black and lives in the San Francisco Bay area, cited “things that were going on in the country” like social injustice and her safety as the reasons for her new found interest in guns.She is just one of many Americans either buying a gun for the first time or adding to what they already own, leading to a surge in US gun sales that started last year and is continuing strong in 2021.
Robin Armstrong said she’s had a phobia of guns since her brother was fatally shot, but that hasn’t […]
Stephan: The World Meteorological Organization has been tracking the rise in temperatures around the world, and they report "The most dramatic change is in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the global average." You would think that would be a major wake-up call and that the U.S. Congress would be discussing in a bipartisan manner how to deal with this. But, of course, they are not. Instead, the Republican Party is spending its time destroying American democracy, and the Democrats are too timid to take them on and eliminate the filibuster.
This Sentinel-3 satellite image shows the June 20 heat wave striking above the Arctic Circle in Siberia. The darker reds indicate higher land surface temperatures. Credit: European Union/Copernicus Sentinel-3 imagery
It’s not just the Western region of the US that’s sweltering right now. Siberia in Russia is baking, and satellites are bearing witness to a brutal heat wave above the Arctic Circle. Copernicus Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B satellites captured a snapshot of land surface temperatures on June 20, and it was hot.
According to NASA, “Land surface temperature is how hot the ‘surface’ of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location.” The Sentinel image shows a peak ground temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) near Verkhojansk, a small town usually known for its extreme cold temperatures.
The World Meteorological Organization has been tracking the rise in temperatures around the world. “The most dramatic change is in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the global average,” the agency said Monday in a statement aimed at raising awareness of
Stephan: Because American democracy is failing, authoritarians throughout the world are arguing that democracy is outdated as a system and incapable of governing successfully. As a result human rights in countries across the globe have been degraded. This linkage between what is happening in the U.S. and the rest of the world seems to be rarely acknowledged in the American media.
Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region has been wracked by war and with some 350,000 people threatened by famine.
The UN rights chief on Monday called for concerted action to recover from the worst global deterioration of rights she had seen, highlighting the situation in China, Russia and Ethiopia among others.
“To recover from the most wide-reaching and severe cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes, we need a life-changing vision, and concerted action,” Michelle Bachelet told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s 47th session.
The session, which lasts until July 13 and is being held virtually, is set to feature an eagerly anticipated report by Bachelet about systemic racism, and draft resolutions on Myanmar, Belarus and Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
In her opening address, Bachelet said she was deeply disturbed by reports of “serious violations” in Tigray, racked by war and with about 350,000 people threatened by famine.
She pointed to “extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and detentions, sexual violence against children as well as adults,” and said she had “credible reports” that Eritrean soldiers were still operating in the region.
