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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.
This is what we have come to in America. Once again we see guns considered more important than children. Instead of controlling weapons, we arm teachers. Can you imagine your fourth-grade teacher walking around the classroom you remember with a Glock or a Smith & Wesson on her hip, or bulging in her pocket? Maybe she’s gotten a shoulder holster. She couldn’t put it in her handbag because she would never get to it in time if someone came into the classroom with an AR-15. I asked my wife who for several decades was an elementary school teacher what she would do if she was asked to arm herself. Her answer was, “I would quit,” and I think a number of Tennessee teachers may make the same decision. Other states run by Republicans will replicate this stupidity, and public education already being severely sabotaged in Red states will be degraded further.
Gun reform activists protest to adopt Senate Bill, which would authorize teachers, principals, and school personnel to carry a concealed handgun on school grounds, in Nashville, Tenn. Credit: Seth Herald / Reuters
Lawmakers in Tennessee passed a measure Tuesday that would allow school staff to carry concealed handguns on school grounds, sending the bill to the governor a year after a shooter opened fire and killed six people at a Nashville school.
The Tennessee House cleared the legislation in a 68-28 vote. Four Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the measure.The state Senate, which is also controlled by the GOP, passed the measure earlier this month.
Republican state Rep. Ryan Williams on Tuesday said the bill would bolster school safety.
“I believe that this is a method by which we can do that, because what you’re doing is you’re creating a deterrent,” he said on the House floor.
Under the legislation, faculty and staff members who wish to carry a concealed handgun on school grounds would need tocomplete a minimum of 40 hours of […]
Pranshu Verma and Cat Zakrzewski, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan:
Yet another story of how AI is distorting American society, and damaging our democracy. We are destroying our ecosystems out of greed and now degrading our democracy with AI. You would think that this would be a defining moment for this issue less that 200 days before an election. Do you see or hear anyone in Congress bringing this up? No? Neither do I.
Divyendra Singh Jadoun, 31, a creator of deepfake content, poses against a green screen which he uses for generating videos using artificial intelligence in the deserts of Pushkar, India, on April 16. Credit: Saumya Khandelwal / The Washington Post
Divyendra Singh Jadoun’s phone is ringing off the hook. Known as the “Indian Deepfaker,”Jadoun is famous for using artificial intelligence to create Bollywood sequences and TV commercials.
But as staggered voting in India’s election begins, Jadoun says hundreds of politicians have been clamoring for his services, with more than half asking for “unethical” things. Candidates asked him to fake audio of competitors making gaffes on the campaign trail or to superimpose challengers’ faces onto pornographic images. Some campaigns have requested low-quality fake videos of their own candidate, which could be released to cast doubt on any damning real videos that emerge during the election.
Jadoun, 31, says he declines jobs meant to defame or deceive. But he […]
The United States has more people incarcerated than any other nation, over two million. Many are physically or psychologically ill. The American Gulag is a national shame. Finally, there is some awakening as to how awful this crisis has become. Maybe there is hope.
If jails, prisons and detention centers are death-making by nature, then it follows that the public’s health is ill served by continuing to invest in carceral structures that make people and their communities sick. Credit: Getty
In Body and Soul, a pathbreaking examination of the Black Panther Party’s abiding commitment to health activism, Alondra Nelson recounts how Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and other party leaders came to prioritize the pursuit of health and healing as vital to their survival — in more ways than one. As the Panthers’ reputation for armed resistance to police violence and demands for a society that left no Black or poor people behind grew in the public eye, so did their criminalization, incarceration, surveillance and even death at the hands of state actors. Combined with disenchantment with the insufficient civil rights gains of the 1960s, evident in the enduring precarity of the so-called war on poverty, the party bolstered its focus on a key aspect of its platform: their people’s health. Serving the people, […]
Here is some good news about the transition out of the carbon era that BIden is making possible. More hope.
Credit: Adobe
Clean energy, like so many commodities in this country, is neither distributed evenly nor equally. Disadvantaged communities have far fewer solar panels arrayed across their rooftops than areas with higher incomes. The federal government just took a major step toward crossing that chasm.
On Monday, President Joe Biden announced the 60 organizations that, under the administration’s Solar for All program, will receive a combined $7 billion in grants to bring residential solar to low-income neighborhoods. The funding will flow into state, municipal, and tribal governments as well as nonprofits to support existing programs for low-income solar and battery storage installations and spur new ones. Such efforts are expected to bring affordable clean energy to 900,000 households.
While the climate and environmental benefits of this effort are critical, the households poised to benefit will feel the most immediate impacts on their pocketbooks.
“Low-income families can spend up to 30 percent of their paychecks on their energy bills,” Biden said while […]
Robert Reich, Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California - AlterNet
Stephan:
It has always surprised me that so many working-class men and women vote Republican. Anyone who takes some time to do a few Google’s quickly discovers that the two things that created the middle class in the United States were the unionization of workers, and the federal programs after WWII that allowed veterans (mostly working-class men) to get financing to go to college, and to buy homes. And then particularly starting during the Reagan administration the Republican Party gutted those programs and restructured the tax system to grossly favor the rich who rented them as needed. The result is the grotesque wealth inequality that now plagues American society. Like everything else it is all going to get down to voting.
Members of the United Auto Workers in 2014. Credit: Creative Commons
On Friday, Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union.
This is a truly big deal. The mainstream media — most of whom no longer have labor reporters — have barely mentioned it, but I believe it marks a major turning point for organized labor.
The victory in Chattanooga is the first successful organizing drive of an automaker outside of Detroit’s Big Three and the first major union victory in the South.
Volkswagen had told workers — in a very conservative Republican area — that the “UAW = Biden” and that the union would “turn Chattanooga into Detroit.” Six southern state governors attacked the union as a threat to “liberty and freedoms” and in a joint statement condemned the UAW’s push to organize in their states.
But the union and the workers triumphed anyway.
We are witnessing a historic rebirth of the labor union movement in America. Labor unions are not just an […]
Here is yet another example of how profit, no matter the damage it does is the defining priority of most of today’s human cultures. Here also is a possible solution to that damage. This, of course, is what the U.S. Congress ought to be working on, instead of the nonsense they now waste their time and our social wellbeing on.
People collecting plastic waste at Dandora dumpsite, in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: Simone Boccaccio / SOPA Images/ LightRocket / Getty
Countries could slash plastic pollution by 80% in less than two decades, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme.
It’s even changing ecosystems. Scientists recently found rocks made from plastic on a remote Brazilian island, and there is now so much plastic swirling in parts of the Pacific Ocean that communities of coastal creatures are thriving on it, thousands of miles from their home.
Dan Milmo, Global Technology Editor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
I have been tracking the trend of using AI to create fake porn that is used to humiliate or blackmail children, and sharing with you my outrage that the media is not properly covering this crisis, nor is the U.S. Congress even talking about it. This disgusting trend is going to affect an entire generation of children and is one of the many reasons I think parents should not allow children access to the internet. When I was a young boy, I went out in the morning and played with my friends, came back for lunch, and went out again coming back when the street lights came on and it was time for dinner. Or I walked to the library and read or borrowed books. Today most children from 3 to 4 in age on through their teens spend 4 to 6 hours a day staring at their phones or tablets, and it is having all kinds of negative social and psychological consequences. I think laws should be passed about doing things with AI like what is reported in this article (British by the way not an American source), and parents need to step up to control children’s access to social media.
According to the IWF, criminals are advising each other on how to use artificial intelligence to create images that can be used to extort pictures from children. Credit: Elise Amendola / AP
Paedophiles are being urged to use artificial intelligence to create nude images of children to extort more extreme material from them, according to a child abuse charity.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said a manual found on the dark web contained a section encouraging criminals to use “nudifying” tools to remove clothing from underwear shots sent by a child. The manipulated image could then be used against the child to blackmail them into sending more graphic content, the IWF said.
“This is the first evidence we have seen that perpetrators are advising and encouraging each other to use AI technology for these ends,” said the IWF.
The charity, which finds and removes child sexual abuse material online, warned last year of a rise in sextortion cases, where victims are manipulated into sending graphic images of themselves and are then threatened with the release of those images unless they hand over money. It […]
JULIE RAY, Managing Editor for World News - The Gallup Organization
Stephan:
Here is well-conducted research on global leadership. For the seventh year in a row Germany receives the highest approval rating. That’s one thing that stood out for me. The other is that Biden is finally improving the world’s assessment of the U.S.. The third is how really poorly criminal Trump was rated by the other countries of the world.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Joe Biden may not have fully restored the image of the U.S. abroad, but it is in better condition now than it was under his predecessor and likely rival in the November election.
A new Gallup report based on surveys in over 130 countries and territories shows that the median global approval rating of U.S. leadership stood at 41% in 2023, down from 45% during Biden’s first year in office but unchanged from his second.
Historically, the 41% approval rating is lower than all but one of the ratings under President Barack Obama but is higher than any of those under Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush.
Biden began his term with strong approval ratings that rivaled Obama’s when he first took office. Median approval of U.S. leadership stood at 49% until the often-criticized U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The United States’ overall rating slipped after that, and Biden ended his first full year in office with a 45% global approval rating and a 33% disapproval rating.
Approval ratings declined further in Biden’s second year, and since then, […]
