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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.
Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg, Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University in Montreal and a Visiting Fellow in the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard University | Faculty at Duke University and Duke Endowment Fellow of the National Humanities Center. - The New Republic
Stephan: And here is the argument for laboratory-grown chicken and meat. I predict this is the beginning of a trend that is going to grow month by month until it becomes the norm. Humans have been eating meat since there were humans, we are programmed for it, so we have to find a new form that does not involve the sadism of the present system.
A lab-grown chicken nugget Credit: Nicholas Yeo/AFP/Getty
Consider a steak. When it hits the hot oil in the pan, your mouth can’t help but water at the aroma. That familiar crackle of fat beginning to fry and render is the sound of the maillard reaction: that wondrous molecular dance of the steak’s amino acids and sugars as they caramelize during the searing process. When you pull it from the pan—it’s only a few moments away now—and your teeth sink into the medium-rare flesh, you will experience the textural contrast of the unctuous interior and the crispy crust. But you won’t be thinking about chemistry. With the aroma, the texture, and the savory juices coating your tongue, you will be absorbed. This is what it feels like to eat a perfect steak, and it feels good.
Now imagine that no animal suffered and died to provide you with this pleasure. In early February, the Israeli company Aleph Farms announcedthat it had 3-D printed a steak from live animal-cell cultures. The approach simulates the vascular system of living animal […]
Stephan: It isn't just eating animals, and fowl we must rethink, we are destroying the ecosystems of the oceans, rivers, and lakes. We have got to stop treating the planet as an exploitable resource and begin to realize that we live embedded in a matrix of consciousness, that all life is interconnected and interdependent, and that we must make fostering wellbeing of all life forms our first priority at every level.
Large beluga sturgeon in lake Credit: Getty
The human population shows no signs of being threatened, though the same can’t be said for our fellow animals. In particular, freshwater fish, which humans have used for food, sport and as pets for millennia, are in the middle of an ecological crisis of our doing. That’s according to a recent report put together by 16 global conservation organizations, which estimated that roughly one-third of the world’s 18,075 freshwater fish species face possible extinction.
The report, which was published by groups including the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Global Wildlife Conservation, argues that climate change, pollution, the introduction of invasive species, the destruction of habitats and overly aggressive draining and damming of the world’s rivers, lakes and wetlands have played a role in the decline of freshwater fish species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said that, of the more than 10,000 species whose conservation status has been studied, 30 percent are at risk of going extinct.
The extinction of billions of freshwater fish would have catastrophic consequences on the […]
Stephan: Today I had to go to the doctor's and as I sat there double-masked, at the other end of the waiting room an attractive blonde-haired middle-aged woman also sat. After a few moments I noticed that although she made not a sound, there were tears streaming down her face. I was torn between giving her privacy in her obvious sadness, and saying something, and finally I asked her, "Are you okay?" She looked up at me, seeing me I think for the first time, and answered, "My mother... she died last night in Seattle of Covid." I responded by saying the sort of things you say, as the doctor came out to usher me into his treatment room. When I came out the woman was gone. All day I have been thinking about what has happened to America, and why. How hundreds to thousands of us have died, leaving millions of us bereft as that woman, lives forever changed, and much of that death utterly unnecessary. So in recognition of those deaths, and the truth of why so many of them happened I am devoting today's edition of SR to that single issue.
Erin Cunningham and Paul Schemm, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: I listened and watched President Biden's moving remembrance of the hundreds of thousands who have died from this pandemic. A crisis so badly handled by the Trump administration that we have 4.23% of the world's population and 25% of those who died from this pandemic. And, as Anthony Fauci has stated explicitly 10s of thousands of those deaths are be directly attributed to the Republican politicization of the government policies to deal with the pandemic. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are guilty of mass murder; it is that simple.
Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during a news conference at the White House Jan. 21, 2021. Credit: Al Drago/Bloomberg
Half a million people in the United States should not have died from the coronavirus pandemic in one of the world’s richest and most sophisticated countries, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci said amid ceremonies marking half a million dead from the coronavirus pandemic.
In remarks to Reuters on Monday, Fauci, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the death toll of 500,000 “stunning” and said that “intense” political divisiveness contributed to the nation’s poor handling of the pandemic.
“This is the worst thing that’s happened to this country with regard to the health of the nation in over 100 years,” he said.Here are some significant developments:
Amid Monday’s solemn ceremony commemorating 500,000 dead, there was also good news, vaccinations are up, deaths and new infections are down and the question of beating the pandemic is now more when than if.
Stephan: The united States is faced with an existential crisis, even larger than the Covid-19 pandemic, indeed, the pandemic is part of this larger trend -- climate change. What we have seen in the past month alone is that the Republican ideology is simply inadequate to deal with this challenge to human civilization in the United States. And yet about a third of the American population simply does not seem capable of recognizing the facts of that reality.
Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty
The U.S. is expected to cross a grim milestone on Monday that was unimagined by even the worst projections from the beginning of the pandemic nearly one year ago: Half a million dead from COVID-19. And those are just the direct deaths from recorded instances of the disease. Excess mortality rates show that for every two official COVID-19 deaths, there’s another excess death, likely due to myriad related causes, from increased rates of poverty to strains on the health care system to undiagnosed cases. What is clear, however, is that the past year has exposed the rot of GOP ideology that led to such excess death and despair.
While Republicans love to quibble to muddy the waters around pandemic failure assessment, there is no denying that Donald Trump’s approach to the coronavirus — do as little as possible, push for premature re-openings, hide the evidence by discouraging testing — led to hundreds of thousands more dead Americans than we would have seen […]
Stephan: Thousands of us, tens of thousands of us, died as a result of deliberate calculated disinformation spread by Trump, the Republicans in Congress and the Rightwing media fantasy machine. When I think of those deaths I remember that most of the dead Americans were part of a social node of family and friends, four, five, six, 10 men, women, and children those dead left behind whose lives are forever changed.
As the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approached the half-million mark, one of the nation’s top doctors on Sunday tied the politicization of mask-wearing—for which former President Donald Trump and various other Republicans have been widely criticized—to “tens of thousands” of deaths nationwide.
“The evidence was pretty compelling by last March or April that uniform wearing of masks would reduce transmission of this disease. And yet, with a variety of messages through a variety of sources, mask-wearing became a statement about your political party or an invasion of your personal freedom,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told “Axios on HBO.”
“A mask is nothing more than a life-saving medical device, and yet it got categorized in all sorts of other ways that were not factual, not scientific, and, frankly, dangerous,” he said. “And I think you could make a case that tens of thousands of people died as a result.”
While in office, Trump at times mocked mask-wearing and refused to don one himself despite expert conclusions that face coverings and social distancing could save many lives. As president, he was diagnosed with Covid-19 and hospitalized in early October, but eventually recovered; critics
Stephan: North Dakota, a state controlled by Republicans because a majority of the state voters are Republicans, is a classic example of willful ignorance as a social trend. Masks, social distancing, vaccines? Not me, not ever. This seems to be that state's mindset. It proves you just can't reach people who choose to live in a fantasy world. It also means this pandemic is going to drag on far longer than it needs to and more people are going to die than need to.
A notably stupid and willfully ignorant North Dakota resident
Mask-hating North Dakota Republicans this week passed a bill that would make mask mandates in their state illegal.
Local news station KFYR-TV reports that North Dakota House of Representatives moved to ban implementing mask mandates, no matter how severe future pandemics might be.
“Our state is not a prison camp!” Republican North Dakota State Rep. Jeff Hoverson fumed arguing in support of the legislation.
According to the Bismarck Tribune, Republican Gov. Doug Burgum implemented a mask mandate last November in an effort to contain surging COVID-19 hospitalizations in his state.
The governor has since dropped the mask mandate now that hospitalizations have fallen significantly from their peak, but that apparently isn’t good enough for Republican hardliners in the state who want to make sure the governor never does anything to protect public health again.
The bill, which passed by a slim margin of 50 to 44, now heads to the North Dakota State Senate.
Michael Li, Senior Counsel - Brennan Center for Justice
Stephan: This is one of the most important articles I will publish this year. We, in the United States, have reached a crossroads. We have one party, the Democrats who may be flawed by occasional bouts of human greed, stupidity, and incompetence, as all political parties experience, but that remains deeply committed to democracy. And another party, the Republicans, who have become a White supremacy christofascist anti-democratic cult defined by its corruption, incompetence -- just look at Texas -- outright criminality, and committed to destroying our democracy. How our future is going to go as a country is largely going to be determined by the coming redistricting of congressional districts
This is the best article I have read on this subject, and I urge you to read it, and make it clear to your local leaders that you are committed to the protection of democracy, and that everyone regardless of race, gender, or wealth should not only be allowed to vote but that we should make it easy to do so, and we should encourage every voter to understand the importance of doing so.
Under the best of circumstances, the redrawing of legislative and congressional districts every 10 years is a fraught and abuse-prone process. But the next round of redistricting in 2021 and 2022 will be the most challenging in recent history. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, intense fights over representation and fair maps were all but certain in many states due to rapid demographic change and a weakening of the legal framework governing redistricting. Invariably, communities of color would bear much of the brunt, facing outright discrimination in some places and being used as a convenient tool for achieving unfair partisan advantage in others.
Covid-19, however, has further upended the redistricting cycle by delaying the release of data needed by states to draw maps, and in turn delaying redistricting.
This report looks at the upcoming redistricting cycle through the lens of four factors that will influence outcomes in each state: who controls map drawing; changes in the legal rules governing redistricting over the last decade; pressures from population and demographic shifts over the same period; and the potential impact of the Covid-19 […]
