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
Schwartz Report Episode 52: Secrets of Happiness
Today’s edition of SR has only one story. I am doing this because it is my conviction that this is the most important story shaping humanity today. I hope you will take the time to read it, and pass it on to others.
My life has been largely defined by three activities: My experimental research on the nature of consciousness, my research on the trends shaping human civilization, and my research on how to foster individual and social wellbeing. Over the past 60 years, I have written hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, articles, books, and book chapters on these three activities. This just-published research paper is one of the most important publications I have ever written. Something historically unique is happening to Earth and all the beings making up Earth’s matrix of life, from bacteria, and viruses to humanity and everything in between. Whether you are rich or poor, no matter what race you are, or where on Earth you live, it shapes your life, whether you recognize this or not. It is going to shape your children’s lives and their children’s lives. This paper describes why humanity as Earth’s dominant species must change priorities. If we are going to survive and prosper we must make fostering wellbeing individually and socially the fundamental governing every choice we make. As the fires now raging in Los Angeles are telling us the time to prepare for this is running out.
Since 1972 when I was appointed by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to the Secretary of Defense-MIT Study Group on Innovation, Technology, and the Future, I have been studying what is happening in the news, looking for trends. In 1991 I began publishing online the daily Schwartzreport, and since 2005 I have been researching these papers for each issue of Explore in both of which I track trends thatare shaping our future. Even longer, since the late 1960s, I have been an experimentalist studying the nature of consciousness, particularly non-physiologically based, nonlocal consciousness. I go into this bit of bio because these parallel paths in my life have made me recognize a trend that media, politicians, and most people neither mention or even notice: a precognition that is shaping humanity’s future. Let me begin with the United States. If you look at the Project 2025 book, several of whose authors now hold high positions in the current administration, it is easy to see this is the blueprint now guiding the United States. This is a book about […]
I hope that you understand that the catastrophe in Los Angeles, like the one in Ashville, North Carolina, represent opening acts in what is going to be the heart-rending drama of climate change. But here, as this article describes, is an aspect of this epoch that I have not even seen mentioned before: The link between AI and the growing scarcity of water in urban areas already experiencing water inadequacy. What it tells us is that once again profit is overpowering any consideration of planning for societal wellbeing. This linkage guarantees further disasters, and this administration led by felon Trump instead of preparing the United States for what is coming is just spewing out his mental diarrhea.
As multiple wildfires tore across Los Angeles County this week, leveling thousands of homes and businesses and killing at least 10 people, incoming President Donald Trump seized upon the crisis as an opportunity to point fingers and make false claims.
“Governor Gavin Newscum [sic] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California,” Trump posted on Truth Social, “including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”
No such water restoration declaration exists, but Governor Newsom’s water management policies have become a flashpoint for conservative ire after news broke Wednesday that the hydrants being used to fight the Pacific Palisades fire had run dry.
In reality, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, firefighters’ need […]
Putting aside the disinformation crap that felon Trump endlessly spews — a revealing sign as to what his administration is going to be like — what is standing out for me is the insurance issue. In large parts of Florida, it is already impossible to get home insurance, and it looks like something similar is coming up in California. Once again I see it as a warning that the United States is not properly preparing for climate change. Democrats and Republicans both have not taken the climate change trends seriously. The country is going to be transformed over the next 15-20 years, and there is going to be great misery, suffering, and death. because of this failure.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — Wednesday’s firestorm in a wealthy area of Los Angeles could be the final straw that breaks California’s insurance market.
The state’s insurance market has been teetering on the edge of insolvency for years thanks to catastrophic wildfires that have driven many insurers to stop writing new policies and drop existing ones. Wednesday’s wind-driven wildfires in a part of Los Angeles packed with multimillion-dollar homes could accelerate its collapse.
“It’s obviously going to be bad,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, the Democrat who represents the neighborhood between Malibu and Santa Monica where the Palisades Fire — one of six burning uncontained across the region — had destroyed more than 1,000 buildings as of Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve already seen big increases. And we’ve seen these increases not only in houses that are close to the brush, but in areas where you’re surrounded by other homes.”
President-elect Donald Trump […]
As he usually does Thom Hartmann has it spot on. All these issues will be familiar to regular SR readers. WHat I don’t understand is where is the civil nonviolent uprising such as got women the vote, ended the Viet Nam War, and achieved — if briefly — a new age of civil rights. Something is wrong with the psyche´ of the American people, and nothing is going to change this but we ourselves.
Yesterday, Congress certified the electoral vote count making a billionaire president again, starting after he’s sworn in on January 20th.
Yes, we chose a billionaire. Again. After other billionaires spent billions to convince us to make that choice.
As you’re reading these words, billionaires from America and around the world are making pilgrimages to his shabby golf motel to kiss our upcoming billionaire president’s ass and hand him envelopes with $1 million checks that represent a few hours (at most) of income for most of them or their companies.
Meanwhile, our billionaire president-in-waiting is packing his cabinet — the heads of all of the most important federal agencies — with even more billionaires. This is all being celebrated over on billionaire-owned Fox “News” and on billionaire-owned hate radio networks, as well as in the billionaire-owned Washington Post, LA Times, and the roughly half of American local newspapers owned by billionaire hedge funds.
Other countries enjoy benefits like free healthcare and college; modern mass transit; and affordable housing, food, […]
I can remember walking down to the Lincoln Memorial with a Black friend to listen to Martin Luther King deliver his I Have a Dream speech, and looking over and seeing two highly conservative attorney lobbyists walking with us and thinking, “Maybe this is really going to be the end of White racism.” Sadly it wasn’t, and part of the reason for White Supremacy’s continued existence is the racism in law enforcement particularly, in my opinion, in Sheriffs but as this article describes in the FBI as well. It has been a cancer eating into America’s wellbeing since the first day the United States existed.
In Policing White Supremacy, former FBI agent Mike German, who worked undercover in white supremacist and militia groups, issues a wake-up call about law enforcement’s dangerously lax approach to far-right violence. German has been a Brennan Center fellow since 2014, and the book is coauthored by Beth Zasloff.
Despite over a hundred deadly acts by far-right militants since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the far right’s attempts to obstruct the transfer of power to a duly elected president on January 6, 2021, the FBI continues to deprioritize investigations into white supremacist violence, instead targeting marginalized groups such as environmentalists and Black Lives Matter. In 2005, for example, the FBI labeled eco-terrorists as the top domestic threat, despite not a single fatal attack in the United States.
Noting that the FBI does not even compile accurate national data on white supremacist violence, German also exposes the continuing tolerance of overt racism in law enforcement, as well as police membership in white supremacist organizations. The threat these officers pose became clear when at least 28 current and former law enforcement officials were alleged to have participated in the […]
I predict that historians will define President Biden in three ways: First, and the good news, he restored the wreck of the American economy he inherited from Donald Trump. Second, and then shameful bad news, he arranged for the United States government during his term to fund Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Third, his shameful failure to remove Merrick Garland for his abysmal performance as Attorney General.
Human rights advocates in the United States and around the world on Monday condemned outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden for continuing to fuel Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip with a pending $8 billion weapons package.
Since Axoisrevealed late Friday that his administration had notified Congress of the deal, Biden has faced a fresh flood of outrage, with critics calling the president “morally bankrupt” and his decision to keep arming Israel “willful madness.”
“Too many kids still alive in Gaza for Joe Biden’s liking,” Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian American political analyst, said on social media. “This is an administration of cowards and criminals and will go down as a historic worst.”
Two men who resigned from the Biden administration over U.S. support for Israel’s assault on […]
I want to be clear that I do not in any way condone or support what the Muslim terrorist groups did and have done to keep the wars in the Middle East going. But I see all that as no justification for your money and mine being used to finance an Israeli genocide of Muslims. More than that as this article describes is the geopolitical effect that is being produced by this American support of a fascist Israeli government. It is all negative, and yet another way the international status of the United States is being diminished. At the same time what I see is the rising status of China.
Doctors and health care providers across the globe are engaging in a day of action, calling in sick and taking part in other demonstrations against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The “Sick From Genocide” global vigil, organized by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) and several other organizations demonstrating against Israel’s thus-far 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, features pop-up clinics in cities across the world, including in the U.S. Health care workers participating in the event are urging others in their profession to take a day of mental health leave “to reflect on the immense moral injury of funding a genocide and engage the most important aspect of treatment: publicly demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
“After witnessing 15 months of relentless violence and destruction in Gaza, we can no longer carry on as if everything is normal,” the account for DAG wrote in a post on X. “The international system has failed, and we are sick — sick from genocide, sick from complicity, and sick from silence.”
“To all healthcare workers, professionals, and allies — stand with us. Pause. Grieve. Demand change,” the post added.
In a press release, DAG stated:
As healthcare workers, we have witnessed unimaginable atrocities: hospitals destroyed, patients and […]
