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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: What world leaders have not apparently gotten yet is that climate change cannot be handled at just the national level. The only way we are going to get through this and retain a civilization that would be familiar to any of us, is by seeing this as an international crisis.
Activists from the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion pour a black liquid to represent oil, into the mouth of a fellow activist as they demonstrate against oil giant Shell on the beach in St Ives, Cornwall on June 11, 2021, on the first day of the three-day G7 summit being held from 11-13 June. G7 leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the United States met for the first time in nearly two years for the three-day talks in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Credit: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty
The Group of 7 leaders last week ended their summit without a firm and clear commitment on how they’re going to deliver on the annual $100 billion climate finance pledge they made over a decade ago, sparking criticism from United Nations climate chief Patricia Espinosa.
The climate finance for developing nations, Espinosa has said, is “absolutely crucial” to the success of ongoing climate negotiations.
“Regarding finance,” she told the UK Observer, “I’d have really hoped for a clearer signal on how and when we will be able to see the commitment to mobilize the […]
Jack Healy - Photographs by Juan Arredondo, - The New York Times
Stephan: Phoenix today was 108°F. This is not sustainable for outdoor work. It is one thing to stand around in such heat, in the Sun, quite another to be doing physical labor. This reality is going to have many impacts on life in the city of Phoenix. This is part of the Out of the Southwest Trend I see.
Juan Gutierrez and his construction crew were working in the heat, racing to nail together the wooden skeletons of homes that had sold before they were even built.
PHOENIX — As the sun rose on another day of record-breaking heat, Juan Gutierrez and his construction crew were already sweating through their long-sleeve shirts. It was 91 degrees, and workers in a subdivision called Desert Oasis were racing to nail together the wooden skeletons of $380,000 homes that had sold before they were even built.
“Your skin falls off, you have to cover up everything,” said Mr. Gutierrez, 22, who has been undocumented since he came to the United States as a 4-year-old. “It’s work you have to do. You have no choice.”
Patty Tordigno directing traffic in downtown Phoenix. She keeps a cooler by the side of the road to help with the […]
ELIZABETH DIAS and RUTH GRAHAM, Virginian Pilot/The New Yokr Times - The Virginian Pilot
Stephan: I find this manufactured confrontation between the Roman Catholic Bishops, and the state, in the persons of Joe Biden and his wife, one of the stupidest political moves I have ever seen. The bishops are using their religious authority to influence state policies. It is positively medieval. Something from the Medici. And I predict there is going to be enormous pushback, resulting in a diminution of the bishops, and the church itself. But equally important there is going to be a wrenching apart of the Roman Catholic community and a challenge to the authority of the Pope himself. This is truly boneheaded.
The President and FIrst Lady at. mass
Pope Francis and President Joe Biden, both liberals, are the two most high-profile Roman Catholics in the world.
But in the United States, neither of these men is determining the direction of the Catholic Church. It is now a conservative movement that decides how the Catholic Church asserts its power in America.
That reality was unmistakably declared last week, when the country’s bishops voted overwhelmingly to draft guidelines for the Eucharist, advancing a conservative push to deny Biden Communion over his support for abortion rights.
“There is a special obligation of those who are in leadership because of their public visibility,” Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who heads the diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in Indiana, said after the vote.
It was the most dramatic example of the conservative Catholic movement’s reach since Biden was elected. But the contingent had been gaining strength throughout the Donald Trump era, clashing with the Vatican, wresting influence away from Pope Francis’ top representatives in the United States and further polarizing the Catholic faithful in the process. And now, American […]
Stephan: Roman clergy sex abuse has passed from the media's center stage, but that does not mean it is resolved, or has stopped. This is the other dynamic that will be involved in the confrontation of the bishops and the Bidens.
Pope Francis
After reports of children being sexually harassed in Catholic institutions, senior UN rights experts have urged the Vatican to end child sex abuse in these institutes and punish the victims.
Four special rapporteurs have revealed that they had written to the Vatican in April, voicing their “utmost concern about the numerous allegations around the world of sexual abuse and violence committed by members of the Catholic Church against children”.
These rapporteurs do not represent the United Nations (UN) but submit their findings to the UN, and have now released their letters that they sent to the UN.
The experts called for “all necessary measures” to stop any kind of future sexual abuse to children and accused that the Catholic institutes “protect alleged abusers, cover up crimes, obstruct accountability of alleged abusers, and evade reparations due to victims”.
In addition to this, the experts have also urged authorities to punish those who are behind these crimes and added that it should be made sure that “reparations […]
Lt. Colonel William Astore, USA (Ret.), - Common Dreams
Stephan: We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars of your money and mine fighting wars, that have cost tens of thousands of lives, and untold misery and social violence. For what? This article raises some of what I think are the relevant questions and suggests some answers. I will suggest one more answer that is not mentioned. When we made the military an all-volunteer institution, I can tell you from personal experience, we never for a moment considered that the military would go from an experience most American families would have one way or another, into something that only involves about 1% of Americans, even as it has become unspeakably profitable for the military-industrial complex about which Dwight Eisenhower warned us. So few Americans are involved with the military today that these failed wars are hardly a factor in anyone's lives. That is how politicians are able to get away with them.
A U.S. soldier fires an anti-tank rocket during a live-fire exercise in Zabul province, Afghanistan, in July 2010. Credit: U.S. Army/flickr
Americans may already be lying themselves out of what little remains of their democracy.
The big lie uniting and motivating today’s Republicans is, of course, that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Other big lies in our recent past include the notion that climate change is nothing but a Chinese hoax, that Russia was responsible for Hillary Clinton’s electoral defeat in 2016, and that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was necessary because that country’s leader, Saddam Hussein, had something to do with the 9/11 attacks (he didn’t!) and possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States, a “slam dunk” truth, according to then-CIA Director George Tenet (it wasn’t!).
Americans have become remarkably tolerant of comfortable lies, generally preferring them to uncomfortable truths.
Those and other lies, large and small, along with systemic corruption in Washington are precisely why so many Americans have been driven to […]
Stephan: Unnoticed by many, perhaps most Americans, a woman's right to control her own body once again hangs by a thread. Republican-controlled state legislators are doing everything in their power to overturn Roe v Wade or pinch off access to the functional point of stopping it. So I wondered where do Americans stand on this issue, as objectively verified by research, not politics. Here is the latest and best poll I could locate.
And please be clear about one thing. The abortion argument is not about "killing babies". If that were true then the same people who are anti-choice should be leaders in maternal care, pre-delivery social services, and post-delivery childcare. But, of course, they are not. The abortion argument is about whether a woman or the state controls her body and the maintenance of the subordinate status of females.
In turns out the majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. Here is Gallup's sophisticated assessment.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Nearly six in 10 Americans do not want Roe v. Wade overturned
Republicans are closely split on reversing the landmark decision
Bans on early-term abortions fall short of U.S. public support
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Gallup’s latest update on U.S. abortion attitudes finds 58% of Americans opposed to overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, while 32% are in favor. Since 1989, between 52% and 66% of U.S. adults have wanted to maintain the landmark abortion decision. Today’s support roughly matches the average over that three-decade period.
Line graph. Trend from 1989 to 2021 in the percentage of Americans who would like to see the U.S. Supreme Court overturn its Roe v. Wade abortion decision and the percentage who would oppose such an action. Opposition to overturning the decision has ranged from a low of 52% (in 2008) to a high of 66% (in 2006). It has been at or near 60% since 2018, including 58% in the latest reading.
The high court recently announced it will take up a Mississippi law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks […]
Stephan: The other end of the abortion argument is the legitimacy of the death penalty for murder. How Americans think about this may surprise you. Here is some solid data.
SAN QUENTIN, CALIFORNIA SEPTEMBER 21, 2010A view of the new lethal injection chamber at San Quentin State Prison. The new facility costs $853. Credit: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty
A majority of adults in the United States favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. However, views about the death penalty vary by religion – with atheists and agnostics opposing this form of punishment at about the same rate as Americans overall support it.
Roughly two-thirds of atheists (65%) and six-in-ten agnostics (57%) either “strongly” or “somewhat” oppose the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Atheists and agnostics are small religious groups, representing less than 10% of the adult population, but their share has grown in recent years.
Meanwhile, 60% of U.S. adults overall favor the death penalty, including 75% of White evangelical Protestants and 73% of White non-evangelical Protestants, according to the survey, which was conducted in early April. White Protestants account for […]
Thom Hartmann, Talk Show Host & Author - Salon/Indendent Media Institute
Stephan: Thom Hartmann, in my opinion, is correct in what he says. Democracy is not possible in a two-party system when one party, on the basis of objectively verifiable data, not partisanship, has become an anti-democratic criminal syndicate. The United States is in a cold civil war, one that is not yet fully recognized.
Credit: Getty/Salon
Texas is showing us all how the corruption that has overwhelmed the GOP has reached a crisis point, and it’s killing people.
President Dwight Eisenhower said, “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”
Sadly, Eisenhower’s Republican Party is now there: they haven’t governed to protect or help the people at the federal or state level since the Reagan Revolution. Today, instead, they simply engage in a corrupt form of political performance art while stuffing their pockets with corporate money.
Today’s example: Greg Abbott.
Corrupt Texas Governor Greg Abbott is the poster child for corrupt Republicans’ sellout to the fossil fuel industry. And the consequence of that will almost certainly kill hundreds of Texans this summer. But Abbott really, really doesn’t want you to be thinking about that.
His latest scam to divert Texans’ attention away from this malfeasance is to proudly declare that Read the Full Article
