IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
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: If you are a Jew, or a Black person, or a Hispanic and you have even considered voting for Trump, you need to sit down and talk to your better self because the truth is if you are any of those things you need to admit to yourself that Donald Trump holds you in contempt as a lesser being. He doesn't even want to shake your hand.
Trump loathes Jews
A new report claims that President Donald Trump has privately accused American Jews of being more loyal to one another than to the United States.
Specifically, the Post’s sources say the president “has muttered that Jews ‘are only in it for themselves’ and ‘stick together’ in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties.”
Additionally, these sources say that Trump “has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments,” while also telling aides that he “could never understand” why first lady Melania Trump would ever want to visit Africa.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
A former White House official tells the Post that, when challenged by aides on his comments, Trump would say, “No one loves Black people more than me.”
Another former official said that their best defense of Trump is to […]
Stephan: Here is Trump's latest racist action. Short of holding a press conference wearing a KKK hood how much clearer does Trump have to make it that he is a racist who considers Black people, Brown people, Jewish people, and Muslim people lesser beings?
President Trump announced late Tuesday that the White House attempt to halt federal agencies’ anti-racism training would be expanded to block federal contractors from “promoting radical ideologies that divide Americans by race or sex.”
Why it matters: The executive order appears to give the government the ability to cancel contracts if anti-racist or diversity trainings focused on sexual identity or gender are organized. The memo applies to executive departments and agencies, the U.S. military, federal contractors and federal grant recipients.
Details: The White House said its order would “prohibit Federal agencies and Federal contractors from conducting training that promotes race stereotyping, for example, by portraying certain races as oppressors by virtue of their birth.”
The memo denounces “blame-focused diversity training” and “race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating” while acknowledging that “training employees to create an inclusive workplace is appropriate and beneficial.”
The president tweeted: “Americans should be taught to take PRIDE in our Great Country, and if you don’t, there’s nothing in it for you!”
The big picture: Trump signed an order last week to “promote patriotic education” through an effort called […]
Stephan: I believe we are witnessing an attempted coup by Trump and the Trumpers. Trump is pursuing three avenues, hoping one of them will let him stay in power. First, a blatant attempt to throw out the election into chaos by claiming the popular vote has been rigged. Second, if that works to move it into the Supreme Court, which is why he is so adamant about getting a justice installed. Third, to subvert the Electoral College by restructuring it at the state level in states where Republicans control the legislature. so that it does not respect the popular vote. The only thing that will stop this evil is a vote so overwhelmingly against Trump that it cannot be challenged. But be very clear, an attempted coup is underway.
Kentucky polling place Credit: kentuckytoday.com
There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb. They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not. Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path.
The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord. Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted. The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery.
Something has to give, and many things will, when the time comes for casting, canvassing, and certifying the ballots. Anything is possible, including a landslide that leaves no doubt on Election Night. […]
Stephan: The thing about Trump is that he telegraphs what he is going to do, and in this instance I don't know how much clearer he could make it that he is planning a coup to keep himself in power.
Trump planning a coup
President Donald Trump was asked Wednesday whether he will commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose this fall to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The president declined to do so.
“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.”
Pressed further, Trump said: “We’ll want to have — get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer frankly, there’ll be a continuation.”
When asked by Fox News’ Chris Wallace in June whether he would accept election results, Trump said he would “have to see” and claimed that mail-in voting will “rig the election.”
Trump has repeatedly assailed mail-in voting as widely fraudulent though he and his campaign have released no evidence proving such. Despite the fact that the president and first lady Melania Trump have voted by mail and that his campaign and Republicans have encouraged […]
Stephan: When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964 and 65, I thought America was finally going to get past the cancer of racism. Boy was I wrong. We have a president whose racism puts George Wallace and Orville Faubus to shame, and he is doing everything he can to stimulate racist hatred in his cult.
Trump and Trumpers Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials.
After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.
Trump’s private musings about Hispanics match the vitriol he has displayed in public, and his antipathy to Africa is so ingrained that when first lady Melania Trump planned a 2018 trip to that continent he railed that he “could never understand why she would want to go there.”
When challenged on these views by subordinates, Trump has invariably responded with indignation. “He would say, ‘No one loves Black people more than me,’ ” a former senior White House official said. The protests rang hollow because if the president were truly guided by such sentiments he “wouldn’t need to say it,” the official said. “You let […]
Stephan: Two hundred thousand of us are dead of the coronavirus. Here is the story of the Trump Covid-19 effort told from the inside. It is, of course, yet another account of criminality, incompetence, and self-advancement.
Max Kennedy Illustration by Joao Fazenda
Months before Bob Woodward’s book “Rage” documented President Trump’s efforts to deceive Americans about the peril posed by covid-19, Robert F. Kennedy’s twenty-six-year-old grandson tried to blow the whistle on the President’s malfeasance from an improbable perch—inside Trump’s coronavirus task force.
In April, Max Kennedy, Jr., despite having signed a nondisclosure agreement, sent an anonymous complaint to Congress detailing dangerous incompetence in the Administration’s response to the pandemic. On the phone recently from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, Kennedy explained why he’d alerted Congress. “I just couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I was so distressed and disturbed by what I’d seen.”
How did a Kennedy end up in a sensitive role in the Trump Administration? After graduating from Harvard, in 2016, Kennedy did some time at consulting and investment firms; he planned to take the LSAT in March, but the pandemic cancelled it. At loose ends, he responded to a friend’s suggestion that he join a volunteer task force that Jared Kushner was forming, to get vital personal protective equipment, such as masks, […]
Stephan: Water is destiny. I have been writing about this for more than a decade, and it amazes me how little effort worldwide is being made to prepare for what is already happening, let alone what is going to happen. This report lays it out.
One in four children worldwide will be living in areas of extremely high water stress by 2040, researchers estimated
From erratic rainfall to severe droughts, global warming is increasing competition for water around the world, with water-related conflicts on the rise.
According to the WRI, more than two billion people live in countries experiencing “high” water stress.
Conserving forests, wetlands and watersheds, including those around cities, can help absorb rainfall, helping stem crop losses from flooding and drought.
From Yemen to India, and parts of Central America to the African Sahel, about a quarter of the world’s people face extreme water shortages that are fueling conflict, social unrest and migration, water experts said on Wednesday.
With the world’s population rising and climate change bringing more erratic rainfall, including severe droughts, competition for scarcer water is growing, they said, with serious consequences.
“If there is no water, people will start to move. If there is no water, politicians are going to try and get their hands on it and they might start to fight over it,” warned Kitty van der Heijden, head […]
Stephan: This report of one of several water wars already underway, tells me two things. This is a growing trend; and 2) This is a world where a small group of dedicated digital warriors in or out of government can skew the course of history. Another example is the ongoing Russian trollwork to influence American voters to favor Trump, just as they did in the 2016 election.
Workers move iron girders from a crane at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), near Guba in Ethiopia, on December 26, 2019. Credit: EDUARDO SOTERAS / AFP/ Getty
It took only a few weeks to plan the cyberattack—and a few more to abandon the world of ethical hacking for the less noble sort. But they would do anything for the Nile, the four young Egyptians agreed.
With that, the group calling themselves the Cyber_Horus Group in late June hacked more than a dozen Ethiopian government sites, replacing each page with their own creation: an image of a skeleton pharaoh, clutching a scythe in one hand and a scimitar in the other. “If the river’s level drops, let all the Pharaoh’s soldiers hurry,” warned a message underneath. “Prepare the Ethiopian people for the wrath of the Pharaohs.”
“There is more power than weapons,” one of the hackers, who asked not to be identified by name, told Foreign Policy. Also, it was a pretty easy job, the hacker added.
A few weeks later and thousands of miles away, a 21-year-old Ethiopian named Liz applied red […]
