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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: Today we had Steve Bannon and his grift. Yet another person in Trump's immediate circle caught as a law-breaker. And how about this? Remember that shady sweetheart deal Moscow Mitch worked out for Kentucky in which a Russian company was going to invest several hundred million dollars in the state? Well, it turns out it was even shadier than we knew. Everything about Trump and his followers at some point turns out to be some kind of crooked grift or scam, and so often there is a Russian intelligence aspect to it.
Oleg_V._DeripaskaCredit: World economic Forum
Rusal, a Russian aluminum company, has invested heavily in a mill that the North American company Braidy Industries has planned for Eastern Kentucky — and according to a Senate Intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Rusal is a “proxy for the Kremlin.”
In 2019, journalist Morgan Watkins reports in the Louisville Courier Journal, Rusal agreed to invest $200 million in Braidy’s mill. And the bipartisan Senate Intelligence report, released on August 18, describes Russian oligarch and Rusal co-owner Oleg Deripaska’s ties to the Kremlin.
According to the report, “Deripaska’s companies, including Rusal, are proxies for the Kremlin, including for Russian government influence efforts, economic measures and diplomatic relations.”
Watkins notes that according to a Securities and Exchange Commission report that Braidy filed in June, Rusal had provided $75 million for the mill as of December 31, 2019 but had discontinued contributions until Braidy could secure another $300 million in funding.
The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Rusal, but Kentucky’s two Republican senators — Sen. Rand Paul and Senate Majority […]
Sean Fleming, Senior Writer - World Economic Forum
Stephan: I have been talking about climate change migrations, and here is the most recent data. Once again it confirms Schwartz' Law of Climate Change: it is going to happen sooner than predicted, and it is going to be far worse than previously assumed.
Billions more people could be living in desert-like conditions unless climate change is addressed. Credit: REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
In the next 50 years, a third of the world’s population could be living in areas as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara now.
Humans have adapted to live in a narrow band of environmental and climatic fluctuations, but temperature rises threaten this.
Health, food security and economic growth would face huge challenges outside the temperature ranges we currently inhabit.
By 2070, one-third of people could be living in conditions that are outside humanity’s comfort zone. That’s the conclusion of a group of scientists from the US, China and Europe who have analysed rising global temperatures and compared them to average climatic conditions over the last 6,000 years.
Their research warns that unless decisive action is taken to reverse the damage done by greenhouse gases, billions of people could be living in what are “unliveable” circumstances.
Climate change-related rapid temperature rise combined with population growth means that about 30% of the world’s projected population will live in […]
Stephan: It was 130°F in shade in Death Valley, California. To be honest, even though I have been in the Sahara desert, and spent weeks in the Egyptian-Libyan desert in both of which the temperature would get to 114°, I can't really imagine what 130° is like. What I do know is that within minutes, in full sun, one would be in life-threatening danger.
As I write this it is 110°F in Los Angeles and 113° in Phoenix. This is becoming the new norm, and its effect on the American Southwest is going to be devastating.
The Badwaters Basin area of the Death Valley Desert in California pictured on February 26, 2019. Credit: Eric Baradat, AFP
A temperature of 54.4 degrees Celsius (130°F) in the shade at Death Valley in the US state of California on Sunday might be the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth, officials say.
A temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius) recorded in California’s Death Valley on Sunday by the US National Weather Service could be the hottest ever measured with modern instruments, officials say.
The reading was registered at 3:41 pm at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in the Death Valley national park by an automated observation system — an electronic thermometer encased inside a box in the shade.
In 1913, a weather station half an hour’s walk away recorded what officially remains the world record of 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees Celsius). But its validity has been disputed because a superheated sandstorm at the time may have skewed the reading.
The next highest temperature was set in July 1931 in Kebili, Tunisia, at 131 degrees Fahrenheit (55.0 degrees Celsisus) — but again, […]
Stephan: Did you know what a derecho was? I had never heard the word until I read about the catastrophic destruction the people of Iowa suffered a few days ago. The word means: "A derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/, from Spanish: derecho[deˈɾetʃo], "straight" as in direction) is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system[1] and potentially rivaling hurricanic and tornadic forces." Basically it is an inland hurricane, and like sea rise, tornadoes, and heightened temperatures, derechos are part of America's new normal climate. And since derechos will be occurring in agricultural areas they are going to have a big effect on your food budget.
‘Grain bins were crumpled like aluminum foil. Three hundred thousand people remained without power in Iowa and Illinois on Friday.’ Credit: Robert Franklin/AP
I know a stiff wind. They call this place Storm Lake, after all. But until recently most Iowans had never heard of a “derecho”. They have now. Last Monday, a derecho tore 770 miles from Nebraska to Indiana and left a path of destruction up to 50 miles wide over 10m acres of prime cropland. It blew 113 miles per hour at the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River.
Grain bins were crumpled like aluminum foil. Three hundred thousand people remained without power in Iowa and Illinois on Friday. Cedar Rapids and Iowa City were devastated.
The corn lay flat.
Iowa’s maize yield may be cut in half. A little napkin ciphering tells me the Tall Corn State will lose $6bn from crop damage alone.
We should get used to it. Extreme weather is the new normal. Last year, the villages of Hamburg and Pacific Junction, Iowa, were washed down the Missouri River from epic floods that scoured tens of thousands […]
Stephan: Donald Trump and his orcs have made it their mission to serve the interests of the chemical agriculture corporations with no concern for the other beings with whom we share the planet. As a result, first, it was the devastation wrought on the bees; now it is the birds. Please can we get this monster and his orcs out of the White House and the government? It is up to you.
Sedge Wren perched on a branch singing. Credit: Getty
Environmentalists and farmers were relieved to discover that the mysterious and sudden drop in bee populations in the past decade turned out to be linked to neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides that are chemically akin to nicotine. Solving that mystery was not merely important to ecologists, but also crucial to human survival: if major bee communities become extinct or near-extinct, it could devastate human food sources.
Yet as history shows, pesticides applied to kill one type of pest don’t generally stay confined to those animals. (See also: DDT.) Horrifyingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, scientists now believe that bees aren’t the only animals that are adversely affected by neonicotinoids. Many bird species, too, appear to be in decline as a result of neonicotinoids trickling up through the food chain.
According to a new research paper published in Nature Sustainability, rising use of neonicotinoids led to a drop in bird biodiversity in the United States between 2008 and 2014, scientists say. While bird populations have […]
Mark Mazzetti and Nicholas Fandos, - The New York Times
Stephan: First, we had news reports, then we had the Mueller Report, then multiple sworn testimonies in front of Congressional committees, and now we have this from a Republican-led Senate committee. If Donald Trump were a normal person in a normal trial, there is no doubt in my mind that he would be convicted of treason. I cannot imagine how the evidence could be made more irrefutable unless someone produces a video of Trump and Putin actively colluding. Trump should have been convicted of his impeachment, and he should now be in prison. History will be quite damning about this and the behavior of Moscow Mitch and his fellow Republicans. The fact that this report is now coming out condemns them all.
President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at the Group of 20 summit in Japan last year. Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — A sprawling report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference laid out an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian government officials and other Russians, including some with ties to the country’s intelligence services.
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government undertook an extensive campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 American election to help Mr. Trump become president, and some members of Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers were open to the help from an American adversary.
The report drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional inquiries in recent memory, one that the president and his allies have long tried to discredit as part of a “witch hunt” designed to undermine the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s stunning election nearly […]
Stephan: Could the criminality of Trump be any clearer?
Donald Trump; William Barr; Robert Mueller Credit: AP/Getty/Salon
Donald Trump has inflicted mass death on the American people through his malevolent, indifferent and willfully cruel response to the coronavirus pandemic. In the United States more than 5 million people have been diagnosed and 166,000 people have now died — and the true numbers are likely much higher. Public health experts predict that the final death toll may be as high as 250,000 to 300,000.
Trump’s pandemic response is not the same as Nazi Germany. It is not Rwanda. But Trump’s response is something that is well beyond a policy mistake. One hundred thousand people are dead. There are likely to be 150,000 or perhaps even 200,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The estimates are that two-thirds or more of the deaths could have been prevented. …
Moreover, it was premeditated. There were people in the White House and elsewhere warning Donald Trump, “People are going to die. We need to do […]
Stephan: How deeply embedded is White racism in the American psyche? This story tells you the truth. We should be ashamed. This must change.
In the United States, racial disparities in human health can impact even the first hours of a person’s life, according to new research.
Black newborn babies in the United States are more likely to survive childbirth if they are cared for by Black doctors, but three times more likely to die when looked after by White doctors, a study has found.The mortality rate of Black newborns shrunk by between 39% and 58% when Black physicians took charge of the birth, according to the research, which laid bare how shocking racial disparities in human health can affect even the first hours of a person’s life.By contrast, the mortality rate for White babies was largely unaffected by the doctor’s race.The findings support previous research, which has shown that, while infant mortality rates have fallen in recent decades, Black children remain significantly more likely to die early than their White counterparts.
