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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.
An SR reader sent this article to me and asked me to feature it. Her 13 year old daughter got caught up in this, they are still dealing with the nude pictures of her that were circulated in both their community in North Dakota, as well as over the world, and, she told me, it has resulted in her daughter going into long-term psychiatric care, and the family considering whether they should move and leave the state. I have a daughter and can barely even imagine what it would be like to go through something like this. I have covered the dark and evil part of the social media on the internet and the 764 business (See SR archive) but apparently, this trend in our culture is getting worse and worse, and nothing is being done about it, and it is hardly even being discussed in the major corporate media.
NOTE: If you or somebody you know are being targeted or abused by sextortionists you do have options. If you can’t reach out to a loved one or law enforcement you can reach out to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and/or use their Take It Down app to anonymously remove your images from most platforms.
The abuse that Ali saw was unfathomable.
Children cutting the names of their abusers into themselves, children abusing younger siblings, teenagers killing their pets—all of it was celebrated as an accomplishment.
“There was this 13-year-old girl,” said Ali, a former victim of this community, to whom VICE News is referring by a pseudonym. “On stream, she cut her entire body for them. She would do this sometimes daily. They called them cut shows. They would have her cut things into herself, and then they would allow others to tell her what to cut into herself.
“This is the same girl that one leader had convinced to kill her kittens on stream.”
If you or somebody you know are being targeted or abused by sextortionists you do have options. If you can’t reach out to a loved one or law enforcement you can reach out to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and/or use their Take It Down app to anonymously remove your images from most platforms.
All of this happened on Discord, the immensely popular chat app, on a server known as “Cultist.” According to […]
You need to be clear the November 2024 election is in no way a normal or typical election. The United States is in the midst of a civil revolution being conducted through criminal Trump and what was the Republican Party by christofascist White supremacist, militatant male dominant insurrectionists, who are supported by about a third of the voter population. If they win, the United States will become something you will not recognize or want to be involved in. So forget about partisan politics. You must vote only for Democrats, not because they are perfect but simply because they still support democracy and the MAGAt Republican Party does not. That is what this election is about: democracy v. authoritarianism. Period.
To get the project 2025 book: https://www.project2025.org/policy/
The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for all Americans in 2025.
It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.
This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative administration: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook.
The project is the effort of a broad coalition of conservative organizations that have come together to ensure a successful administration begins in January 2025. With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is being organized […]
This is my view of the Israeli – Hamas war: Hamas is a despicable terrorist movement hiding amidst the Palestinian population in Gaza. That said the Israeli approach to dealing with Hama has been equally despicable, and tens of thousands of innocent civilians have died as a result of the approach implemented by Benjamin Netanyahu. What no one talks about is that none of this would have been happening if the Israelis had agreed to and implemented the two-state solution.
AROUND 9:30 P.M. in late February, a white Mazda pulled up near a game cafe in the Jenin refugee camp on the northern edge of the West Bank, where a crowd of boys and young men often gathered to socialize.
As the car stopped, a few people walked by on the narrow street. Two motorbikes weaved past in different directions. “Everything was fine at the time,” according to an eyewitness sitting nearby in the camp’s main square.
Then the car erupted in a ball of flame. Two missiles fired from an Israeli drone had hit the Mazda in quick succession, as shown in a video the Israeli Air Force posted that night.
According to the IAF, the strike killed Yasser Hanoun, described as “a wanted terrorist.”
But Hanoun was not the only fatality: 16-year old Said Raed Said Jaradat, who was near the vehicle when it was hit, sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. He died from his injuries at 1 a.m. the next morning.
Jaradat is one of 24 children killed in Israel’s airstrikes on the West Bank since last summer, when the Israeli forces began deploying drones, […]
This is how distorted and difficult health care has become for women and girls in the 14 states that have banned abortion but who need OB/GYN care to terminate a pregnancy. This is a manifestation of what happens when medical decisions are made by politicians overwhelmed by ideology instead of physicians.
Lauren Miller testified at a hearing called by Democrats to discuss the impact of abortion laws across the country and to promote legislation meant to protect abortion travel. Credit: Screen capture
More than 170,000 women and girls have traveled out of state to receive abortion care since January of last year, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute, a figure underlined by the increasing difficulty to access care in some states.
Out-of-state care accounted for more than 15 percent of the estimated 1 million clinician-provided abortion procedures between 2023 and March of this year, according to the data. That figure has more than doubled since 2020.
“Traveling for abortion care requires individuals to overcome huge financial and logistical barriers, and our findings show just how far people will travel to obtain the care they want and deserve,” Guttmacher data scientist Isaac Maddow-Zimet said in a statement.
“Despite the amazing resiliency of abortion patients and providers, we can’t lose sight of the fact that this is neither normal nor acceptable,” he continued. “A person should not have […]
Peter Corkeron, Contributing Writer, Marine Ecologist and Conservation Biologist. - Common Dreams
Stephan:
I think whaling is disgusting and evil. The return of whaling provides two leading examples of this truth: The leaders and governments of human societies neither understand nor respect the matrix of life, and greed always trumps any other consideration.
The harpoon ship Hvalur 9 is seen transporting two Fin whales on Hvalfjordur fjord near the village of Midsandur, Iceland, some 70 km north of Reykjavik, on August 06, 2022. Credit: Sergei Gapon / Anadolu Agency /Getty
Whaling is seen as an evil of the past, memorialized in events like ritual recitations of Moby Dick. Or invented as a metaphor for the worst of humanity’s greed—the Tulkun hunts in Avatar: The Way of Water. But commercial whaling hasn’t actually stopped, it’s merely scaled back. Japan, Iceland, and Norway still engage in commercial whaling.
On May 9th, a spokesperson for the Japanese government announced that they were intending to set a hunting quota for fin whales. A week earlier, the Kangei Maru, a brand new, state of the art whaling factory ship, was launched. It’s almost four decades since the Japanese whaling industry felt the need for a new whaling mothership, and this one’s specifications will allow whalers to butcher […]
Please do me the service of writing Richard W. Spinrad, Ph.D. (nos.info@noaa.gov), and tell him how much you disapprove of the decision of NOAA to allow the Makah Tribe in Washington State to begin whaling again. And send a copy of your email to Janine Ledford Executive Director of the Makah Cultural and Research Center (COS@makah.com). The only thing that is going to stop the Makah from starting whaling again is lots and lots of citizens objecting, and letting these two people know of your objections. This is what I wrote:
Richard W. Spinrad, Ph.D —
I am writing you, sir, because I have just read that you have permitted the Makah Tribe in Washington State to begin killing whales again. The argument that this tribe is being permitted to begin whaling once again because it is an ancient tradition is absolute nonsense. Slavery was a tradition in the Southern states of North America for centuries until like whaling it was stopped. Should the Southern states bring back slavery because it was an ancient tradition there? Of course not.
Knowing all the research on whales, and their endangerment, how could you possibly make such an evil decision? And this tribe should be ashamed of themselves.
— Stephan A. Schwartz
Two Makah Indian whalers stand atop the carcass of a dead gray whale after helping tow it close to shore in the harbor at Neah Bay, Washington, on 17 May 1999. Credit: Elaine Thompson / AP
After facing decades of legal and bureaucratic hurdles, the Makah Tribe in Washington has won approval from the US to resume whale hunting for the first time in 25 years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries announced on Wednesday that it would grant the tribe a waiver, allowing the Makah “a limited subsistence and ceremonial hunt” under an 1855 treaty. The Makah will be permitted to hunt up to 25 eastern North Pacific gray whales over 10 years.
The tribe of 1,500 people on the north-western tip of the Olympic Peninsula is the only Native American tribe with a treaty that specifically mentions a right to hunt whales. But it has faced more than two decades of court challenges, bureaucratic hearings and scientific review as it seeks to resume hunting for gray whales.
The decision by NOAA Fisheries grants the tribe a waiver under […]
The Earth is talking to us, unfortunately, we are not paying appropriate attention and the impact is going to cause enormous misery and death, and not just for humans. The matrix of life is under threat, and it is our fault.
Recent assessments suggest the ocean current known as Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is slowing down, with collapse a real possibility this century.
The AMOC is a globally important current in the Atlantic Ocean, where surface water moves northward as part of the Gulf Stream and transports warm water towards the Arctic. There it cools and sinks to return southward as a deep ocean current.
However, because Earth’s climate system is interconnected, these impacts could have a global reach. Our new research shows past changes in AMOC have had significant impact on temperatures in New Zealand and across the southern hemisphere. These results imply that future collapse of AMOC may accelerate ongoing warming trends.
Lessons from the past
Between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, Earth transitioned from peak ice-age conditions to a climate more like today’s. This interval featured rising global temperatures, melting ice sheets and climbing sea levels – all phenomena associated with present-day climate change.
What I find very strange about corporate media, the big networks, the big newspapers, is that they are hardly covering what Biden is doing to foster wellbeing for average Americans. Here is an example of that if mean when I say they are not properly covering what is happening.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on protecting consumers from hidden junk fees as CEO of xBk Tobi Parks, center, and CEO of DICE Phil Hutcheon, left, listen during an event at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building on June 15, 2023, in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty
President Joe Biden has embraced a decidedly pro-consumer agenda at a time when many Americans aren’t feeling confident about the state of the economy — even though it may do little to assure voters whose primary economic concern is higher prices.
Through his executive authority, Biden has taken steps to combat “junk fees” — hidden fees that make everything from airline bookings to concert tickets more expensive than their sticker price, but also just feel like shady corporate attempts to get the better of consumers. He has also required companies to provide more transparency in their pricing.
His administration has also tackled monopolies like it’s the Roosevelt era, filing a flurry […]
