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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.
The MAGAts are arming themselves. They want civil violence, and I think as a society government at both the state and federal level should be recognizing that and planning how we are going to deal with it. No living American has ever seen major civil violence on our soil. However, there is a hunger for violence in the White christofascists and it may manifest this Fall.
Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally. Far-right Oath Keepers patrol Emancipation Park. Credit: Anthony Crider / Wikimedia Commons / Carl Gibson
Americans who have purchased firearms since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic are far more willing to engage in political violence against their fellow citizens, according to a new study.
The Guardian recently reported on a study by the University of California-Davis’ violence prevention research program dubbed “Firearm Ownership and Support for Political Violence in the United States.” Researchers surveyed roughly 13,000 gun owners who bought their weapons over the last four years, and asked if violence was justified in order to accomplish political objectives. 39% of gun owners — a plurality — said yes, while 30% said no.
UC-Davis researchers warned that American gun owners in the survey could potentially be “arming up for anticipated civil conflict.”
“Our findings strongly suggest that large numbers of armed individuals who are at least potentially willing to engage in political violence are in public places across the US […]
HILLEL ITALIE and KIMBERLEE KRUESI, Report - Associated Press
Stephan:
If it isn’t clear to you by now it should be. The United States is under a christofascist attack led by criminal Trump. Although there are some Blacks and Hispanics this is an overwhelmingly White minority cohort, and they are trying to take control of the country and think they can achieve this in November. If they do censorship, gender control, White supremacy, and indoctrination instead of education will define the American culture, and the United States will become a larger version of Hungary and Russia. Putin, Orban, and Trump will be the leaders for their lifetimes.
Tom Bober, librarian and President of the Missouri Association of School Librarians. Credit: Jeff Roberson / AP
When an illustrated edition of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” was released in 2019, educators in Clayton, Missouri needed little debate before deciding to keep copies in high school libraries. The book is widely regarded as a classic work of dystopian literature about the oppression of women, and a graphic novel would help it reach teens who struggle with words alone.
But after Missouri legislators passed a law in 2022 subjecting librarians to fines and possible imprisonment for allowing sexually explicit materials on bookshelves, the suburban St. Louis district reconsidered the new Atwood edition, and withdrew it.
“There’s a depiction of a rape scene, a handmaid being forced into a sexual act,” says Tom Bober, Clayton district’s library coordinator and president of the Missouri Association of School Librarians. “It’s literally one panel of the graphic novel, but we felt it was in violation of the […]
Here is an important assessment showing that wellbeing is fostered by ordinary people even when the profit greed corporations and those who work within them, pour countless money into maintaining things that cause damage to the earth’s wellbeing. What it is saying is that you can make a difference. Are you willing to?
Hundreds of Native Americans and supporters protested the Dakota Access Pipeline at Lafayette Park in front of the White House on October 12, 2021, in Washington D.C. Credit: Yasin Ozturk / Anadolu Agency / Getty
Human activity in a profit-driven world divided by nation-states and those who have rights and those who don’t is the primary driver of climate change. Burning fossil fuels and destroying forests have caused inestimable environmental harm by producing a warming effect through the artificial concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has risen by 50 percent in the past 200 years, much of it since the 1970s, raising in turn the Earth’s temperature by roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
Indeed, since the 1970s, the decade which saw the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant economic ideology in the Western world, CO2 emissions have increased by about 90 percent. Unsurprisingly, average temperatures have risen more quickly over the past few decades, and the last 10 years have been the warmest years on record. […]
As this report lays out, the U.S. is doing pathetically badly at creating a EV charging network. The plan was 500,000 charging stations by 2026; it is not going to happen, or even anything close. At both the federal and state level there is no real understanding as to how urgent this is. Personally, I think it is the wrong way to go in the first place. I don’t think the gas station model is what should be developed. I think the roads themselves should charge the vehicles that drive over them. Not every road, of course, but the bigger ones.
Liam Sawyer charges his 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E at an electric vehicle charging station in London, Ohio, on March 8. The charging ports are a key part of President Biden’s effort to encourage drivers to move away from gasoline-powered cars and trucks. Credit: Joshua A. Bickel / AP
President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.
But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks — which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road — the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars.
“I think a lot of people who are watching this are […]
Academic freedom and fact-based education have seriously declined in the United States. If you read SR regularly you know that. What you may not realize is that degradation of education is going on all over the world as authoritarianism rises. I think all of this is happening because of the fear engendered by the precognitive unconscious awareness of what climate change is going to do to the cultures of the world. But the effect is going to be a humanity far less capable of factual understanding than in the past, and that has all kinds of negative implications.
A university protest in Hungary, which had the lowest level of academic freedom in Europe, according to an annual index Credit: AFP
Just one in three people live a nation that guarantees the independence of universities and research, according to an annual index warning that academic freedom is declining worldwide, particularly in Russia, China and India.
Attacks on freedom of expression, interference at universities and the imprisonment of researchers are just some ways that “academic freedom globally is under threat,” the index said.
The Academic Freedom Index — based on input from more than 2,300 experts in 179 countries — was published last month as part of a report on democracy by the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.
It measures changes in higher education and research over the last half century by looking at five different indicators: freedom of research and teaching; of academic exchange; of academic and cultural expression; of institutional autonomy and campus integrity.
I have been telling you for over 20 years that water is destiny. I did one of my recent podcasts on this. Now, as this article describes a group of water studying scientists have put together a book on the future scenarios they see. It is even bleaker than my own research had suggested. Governments, throughout the world, including the United States, are simply not taking what is happening with water seriously enough. Basically, they can’t get past short-term greed. The price for this stupidity and short-sightedness, as these scientists describe, is going to be horrific.
An artist-generated image illustrating possible futures in policy and research due to human modifications of the atmospheric water cycle. Credit: Patrick Keys and Fabio Comin / Interesting Engineering
The line between science and fiction blurs when it comes to the Earth’s water cycle. Humanity’s relentless intervention is transforming this delicate balance, leaving scenes of arid landscapes and failing crops a preview of a far more dire future. Land development disrupts rainfall patterns. Desperation fuels experimentation with cloud seeding, bending the weather to human will. The stuff of dystopian novels is fast becoming our inconvenient reality.
To grasp the magnitude of these changes, a team led by Colorado State University’s Assistant Professor Patrick Keys has embarked on a daring experiment. They’ve enlisted water scientists from around the globe to use the power of storytelling to create chilling visions of our potential futures. This unique effort is a desperate bid to understand the far-reaching consequences of our actions.
As I have warned you the weaponization of misinformation aided by AI is threatening democracies all over the world. It is getting harder and harder to get accurate information about anything. It isn’t just China, although this report focuses on that. It is also and particularly, for me, the christofascists. I am spending more hours each day than I used to because I have to be sure that what I am posting for you is accurate and reliable. Also, SR is under daily attack, to a point where Beth, my wonderful webmaster of many years and I, spent an hour today on the phone trying to work out what we can do to make SR more secure. It is just getting very difficult and more expensive, and SR is just one information site out of the many. It is going to change our culture and Congress is doing nothing to help.
Credit: Getty / iStock
Faking a political endorsement in Taiwan ahead of its crucial January election, sharing memes to amplify outrage over Japan’s disposal of nuclear wastewater, and spreading conspiracy theories that claim the U.S. government was behind Hawaii’s wildfire and Kentucky’s train derailment last year. These are just some of the ways that China’s influence operations have ramped up their use of artificial intelligence to sow disinformation and stoke discord worldwide over the last seven months, according to a new report released Friday by Microsoft Threat Intelligence.
Microsoft has observed notable trends from state-backed actors, the report said, “that demonstrate not only doubling down on familiar targets, but also attempts to use more sophisticated influence techniques to achieve their goals.” In particular, Chinese influence actors “experimented with new media” and “continued to refine AI-generated or AI-enhanced content.”
Among the operations highlighted in the report was a “a notable uptick in content featuring Taiwanese political figures ahead of the January 13 presidential […]
Ron Lieber, Contributing Writer - The New York Times
Stephan:
If you lived in Norway as one of a number of possible examples your healthcare would cost you nothing, being covered by federal taxes, and your college would also be without out of pocket costs. Why because in Norway the policies of the government are designed to foster wellbeing for every Norweigan, whereas in the U.S. both healthcare and colleges are structured for maximum profit. One hundred thousand dollars for a year of college, to be honest, I don’t know how an average middle-class family could do it. Even the average price seems unbelievable to me. As this report notes, “According to the College Board, the average 2023-24 list price for tuition, fees, housing and food was $56,190 at private, nonprofit four-year schools. At four-year public colleges, in-state students saw an average $24,030 sticker price.”
Illustration by Robert Neubecker / The New York Times
It was only a matter of time before a college would have the nerve to quote its cost of attendance at nearly $100,000 a year. This spring, we’re catching our first glimpse of it.
One letter to a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering student showed an all-in price — room, board, personal expenses, a high-octane laptop — of $98,426. A student making three trips home to Los Angeles or London from the Nashville campus during the year could hit six figures.
This eye-popping sum is an anomaly. Only a tiny fraction of college-going students will pay anything close to this anytime soon, and about 35 percent of Vanderbilt students — those who get neither need-based nor merit aid — pay the full list price.
But a few dozen other colleges and universities that reject the vast majority of applicants will probably arrive at this threshold within a few years. Their willingness to cross […]
