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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: Trump is gone, but made world of Trumpism continues unabated. How can this be? The answer I think is that we have not fully comprehended how Trumpism came to be. The truth is the right-wing media, finding it very profitable, has created a mental bubble of nonsense, hate, racism, and insanity so pervasive that both ordinary citizens as well as state and federal political officials cannot seem to extract themselves from this hallucinatory reality. This is going to have long-term negative consequences for the country that are poorly understood. Here is the proof of what I am saying. I think that to have access to the public airwaves and cable networks a news operation must be compelled by law to present information that is factually accurate.
Photo illustration by; Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Credit for images: FoxNews and FoxNews.com.
Despite former President Donald Trump’s departure from the White House and disappearance from social media, state Republican parties are still promoting pro-Trump conspiracy theories and moving further right than ever. Some Republican lawmakers have seized on the unfounded voter fraud narrative to try to impose new voter restrictions out of concern that widespread voting could hamper their electoral chances.
The Arizona Republican Party on Saturday voted to censure Gov. Doug Ducey, a longtime Republican Trump ally who fell out of favor when he refused to question his own state’s election results and certified President Joe Biden’s win in the state. The measure, which focused on Ducey’s delayed coronavirus restrictions, did not mention his decision to certify the results, though it came up often among the state’s Republicans. The Arizona GOP also censured Cindy McCain, widow of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who opposed Trump. The party also re-elected chairwoman Kelli Ward, who backed Trump’s baseless legal crusade and filed a
Stephan: I think this is a very important trend to recognize. We are becoming a majority-minority nation, and will be there by 2040-2045. A large number of Whites find that unacceptable because they define American culture largely in racial terms, and see this demographic shift as a loss of White privilege. This is going to be an ongoing trend of resentment, anger, and hate, until our culture recognizes that fostering wellbeing for everyone regardless of race or gender is in the best interests of everyone.
Angry, resentful, White voters
For some, Joe Biden entering the White House has felt like a sigh of relief: The president who unabashedly led the country with hate and helped orchestrate the deaths of more than 410,000 Americans in a pandemic is finally gone. Biden signed 17 executive actions on his first day as the country’s chief executive, and has signed about another dozen since. He has made it his priority to reverse and reject much of Trump’s agenda.
While his gestures so far spell hope, other Americans are holding their breath, familiar with how progress in America always comes at a price. When Black Americans in particular make strides toward equality,the determined hand of white supremacy pushes back. Emory African American studies professor Carol Anderson calls this phenomenon “white rage.”
According to Anderson, white rage is legitimatized through the policies that make up the American political framework. It lives in voter ID laws and manifests in the Black votes that are never cast. It lives in criminal sentencing laws and plays out in a war on […]
Stephan: The linkage of racism and guns traces back to the founding of the United States. The 2nd Amendment exists in part so that slave patrols seeking to recapture slaves that had fled to the free states could carry their weapons into those states, and the free states could not block them from doing that. White Supremacy violence and the linkage with America's gun psychosis is the biggest terrorism trend in the U.S..
A supporter of President Donald Trump carries a Confederate battle flag on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Credit: Mike Theiler/Reuters
The defining photograph of the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6 was that of a man strolling through the broken halls of our national Capitol, amid the smashed windows and assorted rubble of the failed coup, proudly brandishing a Confederate flag on his shoulder and hoping to overturn an election decided largely by Black voters. It’s an image that tells the story not only of Jan. 6 or of the Trump presidency, but also of all the steps that led to that moment — the whole history of hate in America captured in one frame.
For me, the echoes of that picture reverberated back nearly six years, to the day my mom — Ethel Lee Lance — was shot and killed while praying in Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church along with eight other Black Americans, including two of my cousins and one of my closechildhood friends. In the months leading up to that tragic day, my mom’s killer […]
Stephan: Katie Porter is the kind of person you want to have in Congress. Honorable, competent, dedicated to fostering welbeing. She is very clear about why America's Illness Profit System must be fundamentally changed. Here is her latest effort.
A new report from Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) reveals how Big Pharma uses mergers and acquisitions to increase profits at the expense of Americans’ healthcare. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc.
“It’s time we reevaluate the standards for approving these mergers. It’s time we pass legislation to lower drug prices. And it’s time we rethink the structure of leadership at big pharmaceutical companies.”
Rep. Katie Porter on Friday published a damning report revealing the devastating effects of Big Pharma mergers and acquisitions on U.S. healthcare, and recommending steps Congress should take to enact “comprehensive, urgent reform” of an integral part of a broken healthcare system.
“In 2018, the year that Donald Trump’s tax giveaway to the wealthy went into effect, 12 of the biggest pharmaceutical companies spent more money on stock buybacks than on research and development.” —Report
Stephan: Until science accepts consciousness as causal and primary, and recognizes that all life is interconnected and interdependent we are going to continue to destroy earth's matrix of life. We are so close to the edge as it is that it may already be too late. But each of us has got to do everything we can, write every public official, participate in every social action that stresses the wellbeing of the earth, and vote only for politicians who make wellbeing at every level their first priority.
Divers from the Blue Ocean Dive Resort swims with black-tip sharks and other fishes during a baited shark dive in Umkomaas near Durban, South Africa, on December 10, 2020. – Aliwal Shoal, a fossilised sand dune that lies about 4km offshore from the coastal town of Umkomaas, is one of the few places in the world where divers can dive without a cage with Oceanic Blacktip sharks and Tiger Sharks, as the apex predators are attracted by a bait drum filled with sardines. Although this activity still attracts many divers and tourists every year, organisers had to change the name from “tiger shark dive” because of the decrease in their numbers – a decrease environmentalists and dive organisers blame mostly on the shark control devices installed from the 1950’s. Credit: Michele Spatari / AFP
TOKYO — Overfishing has wiped out over 70 per cent of some shark and ray populations in the last half-century, leaving a “gaping, growing hole” in ocean life, according to a new study.Researchers found alarming declines in species ranging from hammerhead sharks […]
Stephan: How crazy has the Republican Party become? Read this and it will give you a good calibration of what that party now is.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene gives America a good calibration as to what the Republican Party has become. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty
On Thursday, it was reported that freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had endorsed a theory that wealthy Jewish bankers had started California’s 2018 Camp Fire by firing a laser from space in order to benefit themselves financially.
You can read her Facebook post, uncovered by Media Matters reporter Eric Hananoki, here. In it, Greene postulates that the “Vice Chairman of Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm” may have used “space solar generators … beaming the sun[’]s energy back to Earth” to fire a “laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth” to “cause” the 2018 Camp Fire in California in order to manipulate the stock market and line the pockets of “Rothschild Inc,” “Solaren,” and Sen. Dianne “Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum.”
Feinstein and her husband are Jewish, and conspiracy theories involving the Rothschilds are a long-standing anti-Semitic trope. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean and director of global social action of the Wiesenthal Center, told me “anyone who used […]
Stephan: John Alexander whom I have known for many years, and who, like me, closely tracks the politics of America has it exactly right in the this essay. We as a nation are on a precipice. We no longer have a two party democracy. We have one party, the Democrats who may be flawed but as a party are committed to fostering wellbeing and another party, the Republicans, that has become an anti-democratic, White supremacist, christofascist nuthouse. As the Trump impeachment trial gets underway, I think, it is imperative that each of us write our Representative and Senators and tell them Trump must be held accountable and convicted, and the nutcases that fill the Republican Party must be expelled from their positions in the Senate and the House.
White Supremacist, fascist, lie spreader, and top rated Fox host Tucker Carlson
Most every weeknight, Tucker Carlson entertains his audience with lies and misleading information. Unfortunately, his show boasts one of the largest audiences on the Fox News Channel. That, regardless the fact that even senior management, and their lawyers, acknowledge that he is not to be believed. It is equally unfortunate that his vast audience does believe much of the information that they are absorbing. While many in his listening audience may not be terribly sophisticated, there are those with advanced degrees, who yet fail to understand, or choose to ignore, the illogical nonsense that they are being fed.
Given the size of the audience, and the amount of false or misleading information put forth, Tucker is arguably very dangerous to the country. The extent of that danger was seen on 6 January, 2021 during which Trump incited an insurrection resulting in the US Capitol being attacked. Frankly, that could not have been achieved without the collusion of Fox News in general, including Tucker Carlson.
Stephan: I have been telling my readers for over a year, since before the Covid-19 Pandemic began, that it is inevitable that as climate change progresses viruses and bacteria will mutate to meet the evolving conditions, and that America's illness profit system is not prepared for this, because it is very costly to develop vaccines, and preparing for pandemics that have not yet emerged is not profitable. Now the World Health Organization confirms what I have been saying.
What should, of course, be happening is that real healthcare systems need to anticipate and prepare for what may be coming, and that some of the vast wealth we pour into defense corporation coffers should be redirected to that end.
The world’s biggest pharmaceutical firms are little prepared for the next pandemic despite a mounting response to the Covid-19 outbreak, an independent report has warned.
Jayasree K Iyer, executive director of the Netherlands-based Access to Medicine Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation funded by the UK and Dutch governments and others, highlighted an outbreak of the Nipah virus in China, with a fatality rate of up to 75%, as potentially the next big pandemic risk.
“Nipah virus is another emerging infectious disease that causes great concern,” she said. “Nipah could blow any moment. The next pandemic could be a drug-resistant infection.”
It is one of 10 infectious diseases out of 16 identified by the World Health Organization as the greatest public health risk where there are zero projects in pharmaceutical firms’ pipelines, according to the foundation’s
