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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: 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 of […]
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 […]
Stephan: Trump and his operation, what was once the U.S. government, are undeniably criminal. At the moment the United States is run by a fascist kleptocracy that is in the process of making itself legal and normal. November 3rd will determine what happens.
The latest bombshell book on the Trump administration reveals new details on the special counsel investigation into the president’s relationship with Moscow.
Andrew Weissmann
“The team led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing President Trump and scrutinizing his finances out of fear he would fire them, one of Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry,” The New York Timesreported Monday.
“The team took elaborate steps to protect its files of evidence from the risk that the Justice Department might destroy them if Mr. Trump fired them and worked to keep reporters and the public from learning what they were up to, Mr. Weissmann wrote in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation,” which Random House will publish next week,” the newspaper reported. “While he speaks reverently of Mr. Mueller, he also says his boss’s diffidence made him ill-suited for aspects of shepherding the politically charged investigation. He saw Mr. Mueller […]
Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, - The New York Times
Stephan: Lest there be any doubt.
Russia has become an authoritarian country under President Vladimir V. Putin, and little in its foreign policy occurs without his knowledge or blessing, national security officials have repeatedly said.Credit…Pool photo by Mikhail Klimentyev
WASHINGTON — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is most likely continuing to approve and direct interference operations aimed at raising President Trump’s re-election chances, a recent C.I.A. analysis concluded, a signal that intelligence agencies continue to back their assessment of Russian activities despite the president’s attacks.
The assessment was disseminated in support of sanctions imposed this month on Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker who has spread information critical of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It is consistent with intelligence officials’ warning to lawmakers in January that Russia was interfering on Mr. Trump’s behalf, a briefing that outraged Republicans and eventually helped oust Joseph Maguire from his post as acting director of national intelligence.
The C.I.A. has moderate confidence in its analysis, a lower degree of certainty than its 2016 assessment of Mr. Putin’s preferences, in part […]
Sophie Comeau, Waylon Cunnigham, Sam Feehan, Nancy Guan, Kristy Hutchings, Kylie Storm, Felicia Tapia, Karen Wang, Abby Washer, and Ashley Zhang , Reporters - USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism/BuzzFeedNews
Stephan: Here is a fact-based report on the massive corruption that like a cancer has sickened the American financial structure and contributed to the obscene wealth inequality that afflicts the country.
A huge trove of secret government documents reveals for the first time how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins.
And the US government, despite its vast powers, fails to stop it.
Today, the FinCEN Files — thousands of “suspicious activity reports” and other US government documents — offer an unprecedented view of global financial corruption, the banks enabling it, and the government agencies that watch as it flourishes. BuzzFeed News has shared these reports with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news organizations in 88 countries.
These documents, compiled by banks, shared with the government, but kept from public view, expose the hollowness of banking safeguards, and the ease with which criminals have exploited them. Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.
Stephan: The behavior of Trump and the Republicans in the Senate illustrate their absolute lack of ethics. This rush to appointment someone to Ginsburg's seat is happening, in my opinion, for three reasons: 1) because Trump wants his judges to confirm his win, should he lose; 2) large corporate illness profit system, carbon energy, and military death merchants, backers all of the Republican Party, want control of the court; and, 3) the evangelicals want it because they don't want women to control their bodies out of the control of men, and therefore they want Roe v Wade to be overturned.
People gathered on the plaza in front of the Supreme Court honoring the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Credit: Alex/Edelman/Getty
A majority of Americans think that the winner of November’s presidential election should be the one to pick the next Supreme Court justice, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Overall, 62 percent of Americans said the candidate who is elected in November should pick the next justice, while 23 percent disagreed, and the rest weren’t sure. The poll, which was conducted Saturday and Sunday, shows that many Americans appear to disagree with the plan by President Donald Trump and Republican leaders to quickly confirm a new justice for the Supreme Court.
As could be expected, the numbers are split along party lines, but the poll found many Republicans agree with the sentiment that the winner of the election should be the one to nominate the justice who will take the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. While eight out of 10 Democrats said the winner of the election should fill the seat, five […]
Stephan: How much clearer does it need to get for people that Trump and his orcs live in an alternate reality?
Pompeo and Trump
The United States unilaterally proclaimed on Saturday that UN sanctions against Iran are back in force and promised to punish those who violate them, in a move that risks increasing Washington’s isolation but also international tensions.
“Today, the United States welcomes the return of virtually all previously terminated UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
According to him, the measures were “back in effect” from 8:00 pm Washington time (0000 GMT Sunday).
The government of US President Donald Trump also promised to “impose consequences” on any UN member state which does not comply with the sanctions, even though it is one of the only countries in the world which believes they are in force.
The threat is formidable: those deemed to be in defiance by Washington will be denied access to the US financial system and markets.
“If UN member states fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure […]
Stephan: Okay, my women readers, do you need any further evidence than this that Trump holds women in contempt? I do not understand how a woman can vote for Trump.
Trump and Trumper women
During the Republican National Convention, the high-ranking women in Donald Trump’s White House tried to make the case for the president’s commitment to gender equality.
Outgoing adviser Kellyanne Conway called him “a champion for women.” Brooke Rollins, acting director of the Domestic Policy Council, went further, saying Trump has more women in his top team “than any president before.”
A video flashed through images of women who advise the president, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. A voiceover intoned: “President Trump has proven that when the stakes are highest, he is proud to entrust many of our nation’s most crucial jobs to women.”
The rhetoric, however, belies the reality in the Trump White House, particularly when it comes to the gender pay gap, a key measure of gender parity.
An analysis by The 19th of the 2020 median salaries in the Trump White House found a $33,300 chasm between the median salary for male staffers ($106,000) and the median salary for female staffers ($72,700).
