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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: Here is the latest on yet another trend that should alarm us but which gets almost no attention outside of a small part of the agricultural community. Industrial chemical mono-culture agriculture must be replaced with an organic system that recognizes the interconnected and interdependent nature of the matrix of consciousness. And it is important to recognize that this is happening in a world radically changing because of climate change.
In Iowa they call it “black gold” – a fertile blanket covering the landlocked Midwestern state. Thousands of years of prairie grass growth, death and decomposition have left a thick layer of dark, organic matter on the vast plains.
When European-American settlers first began ploughing in Iowa, they found the weather and local geology had combined this organic mulch with sand and silt to form a nutrient-rich type of soil called loam. It gave Iowa one of the most fertile soils on the planet and enabled it to become one of the largest producers of corn, soybeans and oats in the United States over the last 160 or so years.
But beneath the feet of Iowa’s farmers, a crisis is unfolding. The average topsoil depth in Iowa decreased from around 14-18 inches (35-45cm) at the start of the 20th Century to 6-8 inches (15-20cm) by its end. Relentless tilling and disturbance from farm vehicles have allowed wind and water to whisk away this priceless resource.
The same picture is seen on farms worldwide. Soils are becoming […]
Rich Haridy, - New Atlas/ University of Massachusetts Amherst
Stephan: Primary research paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smll.202001858
I have been warning readers since Trump came into power and disemboweled the federal agencies whose job was to protect Americans from the greed and lack of ethics of American corporations that it is now incumbent on each of us, each family, to check the food we buy and the water we drink and bathe in because we can no longer take it for granted that they are safe.
Well here is the latest report confirming that.
Titanium dioxide, aka E171, was found to be most damaging to the gut microbiome in nanoparticle form Credit: Subonych/Depositphotos
New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is adding weight to a growing body of evidence suggesting the food additive titanium dioxide, also known as E171, can disrupt the gut microbiome, leading to colonic inflammation.
Titanium dioxide has long been used as a food coloring additive, but at the beginning of 2020 France became the first country in the world to ban the compound being used for this purpose. Over recent years many global companies have moved to stop using titanium dioxide as a food additive amidst growing concerns over its safety, however, it still can be found in hundreds of foods.
Much of the current debate over the safety of titanium dioxide as a food additive revolves around particle size. The majority of titanium dioxide particles used in food additives are relatively large – over 100 nanometers (nm) in diameter – so most toxicology research has focused on the health […]
Caitlin Rivers and Dylan George, - Foreign Affairs
Stephan: From the beginning of this pandemic, I have been telling you that this is not a unique event but the first of what looks to be an ongoing series of such events as climate change alters the earth's biosphere viruses and bacteria mutate to accommodate for those changes. Animals and humans are not going to have immunity to these mutations.
This is what is needed, but it will never happen as long as Republicans are in power -- they are trying to kill Obamacare. This is one reason we should vote every Republican out of office. The problem is I am not sure Americans are smart enough to realize this because Trump still has a 40.5% approval rating. Hard to believe, but true, and that should be a warning.
A Health and Human Services staff member shows a coronavirus outbreak map in Washington, D.C., February 2020 Credit: Carlos Barria / Reuters
In 1900, the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history hit Galveston, Texas. The storm, estimated to have been a Category 4, all but washed the city away. An estimated 8,000 people died, and even more lives would likely have been lost if Isaac Cline, the chief of the Texas section of the U.S. Weather Service, had not spent the day before the hurricane’s arrival walking around and urging people to seek higher ground. He did so on little more than a hunch based on the fact that a bad storm had recently passed over Cuba. The science of weather forecasting had yet to emerge; guesswork was the best anyone could do.
Over a century later, hurricane forecasts are a central feature of summer and fall for millions of Americans. Such forecasts, along with those predicting winter storms, tornadoes, and floods, have saved an untold number of lives and many billions of dollars. Even fair-weather forecasts […]
Stephan: A critical aspect of a successful democracy is a fair and just judiciary. The Republican Party understands that, which is why under Trump and Moscow Mitch, two of Russia's most effective agents, they have spent the past three and a half years corrupting the American judiciary at the Federal level. But it is worse than that, this corruption has been going on at the State level for decades, particularly in Red value states governed by Republicans.
One of the biggest problems facing the United States is that we cannot tell ourselves the truth about ourselves, and this constant lying has eaten away at the integrity of the nation like cancer in the gut. If we are to survive this must change. But it won't until we are honest. The question for me is: Are the people of America finally willing to be honest about who and what we have become. #Black Lives Matter I hope is a first push from the people to do that.
In the past dozen years, state and local judges have repeatedly escaped public accountability for misdeeds that have victimized thousands. Nine of 10 kept their jobs, a Reuters investigation found – including an Alabama judge who unlawfully jailed hundreds of poor people, many of them Black, over traffic fines.
Judge Les Hayes once sentenced a single mother to 496 days behind bars for failing to pay traffic tickets. The sentence was so stiff it exceeded the jail time Alabama allows for negligent homicide.
Marquita Johnson, who was locked up in April 2012, says the impact of her time in jail endures today. Johnson’s three children were cast into foster care while she was incarcerated. One daughter was molested, state records show. Another was physically abused.
“Judge Hayes took away my life and didn’t care how my children suffered,” said Johnson, now 36. “My girls will never be the same.”
Fellow inmates found her sentence hard to believe. “They had a nickname for me: The Woman with All the Days,” Johnson said. “That’s what they called me: The Woman with All the Days. There […]
Stephan: Carl Bernstein, who along with Bob Woodward, rose to fame breaking story after story on Watergate, is doing it again. This is a story about treason, Donald Trump's constant and continuing treason. This man and his Igor Mike Pence should have been removed from office by impeachment months ago. They were not because of the abandonment of any sense of integrity by the Republicans in the Senate.
What should concern all of us, is what else can Trump do between now and November 3rd, because you can be sure he is planning to do many things, all of which are designed to help him and harm America? And he can do a lot of harm. What kind of country do you think we will be in November?
Trump telling his usual lies at the daily campaign rally he holds in the press briefing room, where he tells the world nothing is his fault; he’s doing everything wonderfully, and he has great TV ratings Credit: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.
The calls caused former top Trump deputies — including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White […]
Stephan: I have been telling you from the beginning of the mutated Covid-19 pandemic that this was going to be the first, not the final such event. As the earth's biosystem changes all the forms of life on the planet will have to accommodate to those changes, and that means that viruses and bacteria are going to mutate and we will have no immunity to these new life forms. This pig story may be nothing, or it may be a first report on yet another epidemic round.
Pigs are seen at a family farm in Fuyang, Anhui province, China, in July 2019. A study released Tuesday says a team of Chinese researchers looked at influenza viruses found in pigs from 2011 to 2018 and found a ‘G4’ strain of H1N1 that has ‘all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus.’ Credit: Reuters
A new flu virus found in Chinese pigs has become more infectious to humans and needs to be watched closely in case it becomes a potential “pandemic virus,” a study said, although experts said there is no imminent threat.
A team of Chinese researchers looked at influenza viruses found in pigs from 2011 to 2018 and found a “G4” strain of H1N1 that has “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,” according to the paper, published by the U.S. journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Pig farm workers also showed elevated levels of the virus in their blood, the authors said, adding that “close monitoring in human populations, especially the workers in the swine industry, should […]
Stephan: I have been holding this story for a while to see if any of the major media picked it up and did anything with it. Or any Republican came forward and commented on it. No one really did, and I didn't hear a word on the cable networks.
This is yet another perversion of the law by Trump using the powers of the Federal government to promote White supremacy. The corruption of the American government under Trump is almost complete.
The Trump administration just took another significant step toward derailing a controversial fair housing rule issued by the Obama administration in 2015.
Last year, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said that HUD will look to “reinterpret” the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which requires that cities and towns receiving federal funding to examine their local housing patterns for racial bias and to design a plan to address any measurable bias.
Then, in January, HUD announced that it was delaying the deadline for local governments to submit their fair housing evaluations by one year.
But delaying the fair housing evaluations, which were required as part of the AFFH rule, essentially “gutted” the AFFH rule, according to former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, who oversaw the rule’s announcement in 2015.
At the time, HUD said that the delay was due to technological issues with the Local Government Assessment Tool, a computer program that was to be used by local governments to submit their relevant housing data.
Stephan: Trump whose only real governing interest seems to be advancing himself and his family, and currying favor with the billionaires whose approval he craves, has appointed his orcs to the SEC, so they could help him to rig the laws in their favor. This is where it has left the working people of America, and if you have a 401(k) you better pay close attention.
Securities and Exchange Chairman Jay Clayton awaits the start of a hearing on Capitol Hill September 24, 2019 in Washington, DC. Clayton testified before the House Financial Services Committee on the topic of “Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Wall Street’s Cop on the Beat.” Credit: Win McNamee/Getty
In 2017, Donald Trump appointed private-equity lawyer Jay Clayton as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of the agencies that is responsible for policing the financial industry. Soon after getting the job — and only a few years after the SEC finedmajorprivate equity firms for bilking investors — Clayton was pushing to change federal law to let asset managers funnel more money from retirees to those high-risk, high-fee firms.
Clayton finally got his way last week when the Trump administration issued a letter letting 401(k) plans move the savings of 100 million workers and retirees to private equity billionaires, some of whom have been among
