The fossil fuel industry, and the politician class they own, have no intention of halting the ecocide. As the climate crisis worsens, so do the laws and security measures to keep us in bondage.
"And we only need one to five percent of the population actively working for the overthrow of a system, history has shown, to bring down even the most ruthless totalitarian structures." A pivotal statement to remember and act from. Excellent essay.
“A tyrant needs above all a tyrant-state, so he will use a million little civil servant tyrants who each have a trivial task to perform, and each will perform that task competently, and without remorse, and no one will realize that he is the millionth link in the final act.”
From: Henri Verneuil‘s film I Comme Icare >>> Release date: Dec 19, 1979
Thank you Rosemary! I will try to be like you. I'm only 70 but I too want to PROTEST. I object to what my Senators, Senator Tim Kaine and Senator Mark Warner are doing. I do not think they actually mean to harm anyone/anything. But they are allowing our public money to keep right on flowing into the extractive and warist military-industrial complex. They could and should stop the money. And we ordinary constituents here in Virginia or anywhere must force them to channel our public money toward meeting the real needs of Mother Earth.
Chris writes a great article again. Thanks Chris. I see voting for Jill Stein as an act of resistance against our own ecocide, genocide regime. If Jill gets 5% of the vote, which she can, we can throw a wrench into the Uniparty system. For people of conscience, there is no real excuse to vote for either national party. Their scare tactics are silly arguments to ignore genocide and our endless war machine, while domestic needs for fighting climate change, building affordable housing, and a dozen other needs, are ignored. A woke 5% can change history, if we vote smart, and continue building the movement for change which students across the world have begun. We must act now.
Yes. Most readers haven't heard or read of the Jill Stein/Butch Ware run for the presidency. Corporate media censorship is alive and well... Alas... Ms. Stein is on the ballot in numerous States, and can navigate interviews and answer questions without a cue card...
I did vote for Ms Stein as well, yesterday. And I already sent in my vote by mail ballot. I am not giving in to the BS of the two party corporate duopoly.
As I contemplate all the horrific events of the past quarter-century or so, and the abominable waste and harm that is being inflicted on the planet and >99% of its peoples, I continually wonder about those <1% who hold the reins of power here in The West. Are they certifiably insane, sociopaths and psychopaths not only little concerned with anyone else's welfare and happiness but actively displaying sadistic, or suicidal and ecocidal tendencies?
It is also dependent on certain material and cultural conditions for them to flourish: there must be a food surplus for them to be able to monopolise and support a hierarchy of underlings, and the community must be large enough to allow them to evade detection and pass on their genes.
'In a 1976 study anthropologist Jane M. Murphy, then at Harvard University found that an isolated group of Yupik-speaking Inuits near the Bering Strait had a term (kunlangeta) they used to describe "a man who ... repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and ... takes sexual advantage of many women—someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always being brought to the elders for punishment." When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, "Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking."' (Lilienfeld and Arkowitz, 2007)
It is not inevitable that they rise to possess power. Psychopathy, which is at least moderately heritable, almost is never associated with high intelligence, and the majority of those with it end up in prison for petty crimes and lack of impulse control. A lack of empathy is confused by the sufferer for higher intelligence, yet average IQ is practically genius level for psychopathy. This is to great advantage of the society that wants to eliminate them and turn the selection against them, permanently.
Among hunter-gatherers, such people are discarded. But the emergence of agriculture and the dawn of civilisation has allowed such people to flourish. I rather doubt this is not a sign of our own immaturity that we have not learned to deal with such people appropriately. If we survive, and don't learn to deal with such people, they will probably become a different species like H.G. Wells imagined, except with the elites instead being social parasites akin to slave-making ants that rely on others to do all their work for nothing in return. They already do not resemble the rest of humanity in behaviour and phenotype.
Humanity needs a spiritual reawakening and rethinking of structures and ills in our society whose existence we take for granted, as if it must always be so.
Hello Emma. The Inuit and many other hunter/gatherer clans were anything but socially primitive. Modern psychologist's have been trained to indoctrinate society toward "integrating" psychopathic behaviors into the social norm. Interesting that... Here's an allegedly 'primitive' notion. >>> "A woman of virtue does not allow such child to escape the discretion's of her kitchen. For if such were permitted; thieves and robbers would soon arrive at the gate, and all in her care would be chastened…" - Paul Vonharnish - (Interpreted from the Book of Changes)
Far as I can tell, human society, regardless of material and cultural conditions, is basically the coalition of beta males to prevent the alphas from monopolizing females and resources.
There are plenty of examples of psychopaths and sociopaths among hunter gatherers, and among chimps, for that matter. Napoleon Chagnon describes the phenomenon among the Yanonamo of South America, for instance.
When humans created the concept of artificial wealth commodifying everything imaginable, including the very environment upon which we depend for life itself, there was no turning back from the suicidal path we are now on, like a bunch of bulls in a china shop. Humans were never an intelligent species, but rather a clever one that wantonly did things without having the ability to think things through beforehand, or even worse simply did not care as long as it brought them more and more of their make believe wealth. Enjoy the remaining days we have left as they are running out exponentially now.
I want to apologize to the internet and Truth for previously posting comments that questioned Israeli plans to exploit the off shore gas reserved as a cause of the Gaza genocide. I was ignorant of the facts and lazy and viewed this as a diversion. I just read the Malm links and agree that gas is no doubt a significant issue. I don't think I posted those comments here, but I do know I posted them somewhere!
In the even larger picture, the reason the U.S. supports Israel is because it sees it as its proxy in the Middle East to control the oil and oil routes there. (As Biden said, if Israel didn't exist, we'd have had to invent it." It's been called "Our unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the region. No exaggeration to say the existence and persistence of Israel is all about oil. And no accident it is being used by the U.S. as our proxy against Iran, not to mention Russia and the BRICS.
So sorry.......but what you say is true. I'm using only cash now, unwilling to give anything, even pennies, to your fascistic republic. But I studied there in my youth, and have many happy memories of beautiful Massachusetts and the friends I left behind when I returned to Canada. But thank my stars daily, that I did return to Canada. I have only empathy for the good people of your country.
We all discover we know only a slim part of the puzzle. I had heard of the gas fields, and live in a petrostate now run be dumb fascists (are there any other kind?) but the racist or nationalist diversions the powerful are willing to create to make joe public think the problem is terrorists, not fossil fools perpetuating ecocide, because it pays.......are many.
And most of us are more alone than we realize.......the more we know, the more alone. Be kind to yourself....apologizing for past error is the mark of a good person. Be well.
In my nearly 80 years of life I have seen one climate prediction after another fail to deliver as promised. It is politics, not science. I clearly remember the impending Ice Age from the 1970s. That one didn't happen either.
A computer model is a STATEMENT OF A HYPOTHESIS. It is not proof of ANYTHING. Our entire civilization is built on fossil fuels and has been since prehistoric times.
End fossil fuels and civilization dies. You will starve to death in the freezing darkness.
Models are the curse of our time. People who don't understand the concept of models treat them as having come down the mountain with the 10 commandments. Written in stone, and from "God". They are neither. At best they are a way to conceptualize the world. Good models allow predictive action such as being able design a bridge, because you have a model that allows you to predict the strength of the steel & concrete structure and at what point it will fail.
(even that is suspect, because there are always unknowns such as manufacturing flaws, etc.)
Climate science models aren't about building bridges. They correlate the changes that global heating brings with it.........its systems theory science....and I believe its more robust than any engineering feat of human engineers.
Everything is connected.........and rapid rises in greenhouse gases.....not just CO2, but water vapour, methane etc........quite accurately predicted the weather we're experiencing now.....
Not with the exactitude we've come to expect from classical laboratory experiments.....but the patterns still prevail, and say in more ways than one: WE'RE IN FOR IT.
I wish you were right, but the science says you're not. And the science that predicts what Chris describes isn't classic science....that old system of reduce the variables so your experiments can achieve as close to certainty as possible brought us many discoveries...and medicines. It also brought us better dying with chemistry, plastics and the nuclear bomb.
The science of climate change is chaos theory science....made possible by big data tracking big systems. As the CO2 and other greenhouse gases multiply, positive feedback loops kick in that push the system to new orders of magnitude. Warmer seas, stronger hurricanes, more rain since warmer seas make more water vapour........itself a greenhouse gas. More torrential rains, more flash floods, mud slides and devestated infrastructure. You see it on the nightly news now from your south easter coastal states.
But then there's also drought...which we're experiencing in western Canada...and that makes for more fire, and fire beasts that have energies just slightly lower than an A bomb. Run for your life is about all you can do in those scenarios......houses were gutted to the foundations in five minutes or less in Fort MacMurray in 2016.....remember Paradise??? Hellfire a better name for that lost homeland.
We're upsetting a global stability that has endured for centuries with our fossil fool societies....and endless machines. Even AI is an extinction technolgy, since it will use mega amounts of electricity we actually need to decarbonize our homes and transportation grid.
There is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence...but the Moronic elites have figured out they'll need it when the workers are all dead from fire, flood, pestilance and famine. So to Hell with building a green world........steady on to the gated communities of the truly deserving.
We'd still have to do everything we could to lower the CO2 already baked in to the atmosphere.......it will be up there for centuries....and dictate weather patterns we can only imagine.
"Our entire civilization is built on fossil fuels and has been since prehistoric times."
Until the modern industrial era, all energy was muscle and not derived from fossil fuels. You are talking rubbish, or if you aren't, you should elaborate. To the very best of my knowledge, the Rhomaioi of the Eastern Roman Empire [the 'Byzantines'] were the very first to harvest petroleum and use it basically for its modern purposes, i.e combustion in the form of naptha, Greek fire, and explosives, since crude oil could be found naturally rising to the surface near what is now Crimea at one time.
It is hard to pin an exact date on this due to much of it being state secrets and based on the work of alchemists in Asia Minor now lost to history, but this has not been possible for even two millennia if more than one, let alone for our "entire civilisation [to be] built on" it. The harvesting and use of fossil fuels is extremely new in human history.
"All this in their ignorance they called "civilisation," whilst in reality, it constituted a part of their slavery."—Cornelius Tacitus
Mr. regalo, you are citing your 80 yrs. of living as a proof that climate predictions don't work. I suppose that you are enjoying the same quality of air and water than when you were a baby and that neither you nor your family and friends have experienced the wrath of storms in the Philippines and all around the world. Perhaps even your home insurance and electric bills have not skyrocketed. If all of this is true, then you are an exceptionally lucky man though I'm tempted to believe that your case is more the effects dementia. But thank you for your regalo.
In Ithaca, NY, surrounded by trust funders and families still well protected, still msm informed, believing themselves progressive in a sea of signs for Kamala et al, my generation of boomers perseverating on self and wealth! Having been protesting on and on and on…voting Green since Nader…now supporting SteinWare however much I can….it would take millions of young people putting themselves on the line to even make a dent…🥀🥀🥀
I know. And the saddest thing sometimes, is the obliviousness of your own children...nor is it a consolation that I'll be dead before the sh....t hits the fan for them.
It might be better to put up solar panels, buy an EV, stop plane travel....Action directed at discovering how we could live better with less might be more importand in many cases than protest. Grow your own food......waste nothing.......we can, freeze our rhubarb and raspberries, can our sour cherries.
We had none of this 15 years ago........but now are almost too old to do all the work of preserving the food we grow. Tomatoes this year are still ripening on the vine....I can them.......get tomato juice and diced tomatoes for pasta dishes...
I"ve recently decided not to use my credit cards.....cash saves my local merchant's money...and some of them take off the taxes if I give them cash. We have panels...and an EV......I have a second hand one on order for my daughter in law....
Boycott fossil fuels if possible; tell fossil fools why. Be vocal...what's the point of growing old if we can't be obstreperous?
A question for Minister Chris Hedges or anyone else: How is genocide and ecocide consistent with the idea that there is a just god? To me it is evidence that either god does not exist or it is different from the form Judeo Christian religions conceptualize god.
For one thing, if there is a divinity, it likely is female. I'm reading now in fungi and insects and micro fauna and often close to tears.........of a religious nature.
This planet has a genius for life........and contrary to the arrogance of our patriarchal religions......intelligence is in evidence everywhere. A mystery how it evolved, is evolving....but there are just too many wonderful discoveries being made now for me to reject the hypothesis that Nature is Divine. Read ENTANGLED LIFE by Merlin Sheldrake, or EXTRAORDINARY INSECTS by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, or BEING SALMON, BEING HUMAN, by Martin Lee Mueller...........and you might experience moments of religious ecstacy. I know I have, and it keeps me from the utter despair that our fossil fueled asylum is causing for many.
We do have a beautiful Mother...sad that Dad turned out to be such a psychopath.
And organizes things for the best quite often. I read a lot now about the natural world. I've always loved her, grieve the losses she is experiencing now, the losses my beloved grandchildren may never realize existed.
And the more I read and learn, the more magical our Great Mother seems to me. I get shot down by patriarchs if I suggest the God of War is a psychopath....but the old boy fits the definition. Nature, in contrast, works for balance...Gaea and all her children...was the path we should have taken.
Alas......we like to engineer better worlds......straighten rivers, imagine we can 'steer hurricanes', contemplate geo engineering and imagine Carbon Capture and Storage works........if the public will only pay for it.
Did we ask Nature's permission??? Hell no.........we just bulldozed ahead, improving on things to the end of the world. Our stupid society will likely even change my grandson......who said to me when he was 8 or 9, standing in a field of prairie long grass: I LOVE NATURE. SHE HAS EVERYTHING. I'M NOT AFRAID OF HER.
And than the wonderkin lifted a daddy long legs from the grass, showed her to me, and then replaced her.
What he faces in the future, no God knows....but I fear for him and for all our children.
I, as an agnostic, don't ask if there is a god or not but rather if is it possible for us humans to know if there is a god or not. I think your question was addressed by Greek philosopher Epicurus, in his Aphorisms, stated it as early as 300 B.C.: The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are both able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?
With hurricanes in southeastern part of the United States Mother Nature is fighting back against the man made climate disaster that is unfolding. Human beings are arrogant, believe they are the center of the universe. In the big picture they are insignificance and in the long run if they do not develop a cooperation relationship with nature they are going to be destroyed, which would be the best outcome to save what is left of the earth and it’s innocent creatures which does not include humans!
The devastation from Hurricane Helene is all around me. I live in central Florida, not far from the Gulf coast. And as I write this we are seemingly in the bullseye of another storm/hurricane, this one called Milton. The destruction already so vivid, all around us, may be pushed aside by even more nightmarish devastation. This is the result of our trashing the planet. Not so much in the last five-ten years but in the last hundred-or more! Mother is simply responding to the fever which we, Homo Sapiens, have wrought upon her. Humans are a blight upon this planet, for the most part, and our hubris and unquenchable greed may turn. among other places like the Carolina's, my beloved Florida into a scene from a futuristic nuclear war movie. I am saddened for my precious grandchildren, who are now the recipients of the chaos which they had NO role in producing. Forget all this "praying" nonsense; the people who say 'God is protecting me" must have forgotten their neighbors, who were drowned or killed by falling trees or electrocuted. This is not about "God"; this is action/ reaction, and physics 101. All I can do is hunker down and try to protect my loved ones. We are all reaping the Whirlwind. I wish all of you well
A bunch of us wrote about the oil fields off the coast of Gaza and Lebanon and how Israel is justifying the genocide to get that oil last November. The only thing that has changed is the resistance fighters who are hanging on a year later with little signs of defeat. Hezbollah is joining the fray so Netanyahu's plans to get even wealthier are now going up in missile smoke. This is the unsaid reason why the U.S. and the E.U. have been supporting this war. Oil or the promise of such, if Israel can secure the coastlines and much of the lands going eastward. France has now backed off completely, with others soon to follow. Germany's government is under pressure to stop the arms sales as their industrial economy is collapsing. That leaves the U.K. and the U.S. as standalone supporters, with an ever growing restlessness within the general public.
As someone aptly wrote in the comments, without the constant flow of oil to the west, it will collapse. Germany is a good example since they lost access to Russian oil and gas in the last couple of years. The U.S. will be another one if they lose access to the oil they think they need. Their history with oil embargoes from the last 50 to 60 years is their example.
The end of the fossil fuel age is at hand. One way or another, societies and cultures will be remade as the oil flows become diminished. The flow of oil will diminish because it is a finite commodity and it is starting to run low in traditional places in the middle east. This is one of the reasons why the west is fighting so hard against Maduro in Venezuela, and other places outside of the middle east in order to maintain their unipolar hegemon. They need to keep the oil flowing in order to prop up their failing economy, which maintains their failing military prowess.
It won't be much longer, maybe within the next twenty years or so, if not less, before the U.S. empire and its proxies will fade out and a new world order will rise in its place. Whether it will be something better remains to be seen. In the meantime, expect more wars over oil.
I hope you're right, but I fear that the rising emissions are pushing us into an overshoot we won't recover from for centuries, if ever. It does seem important now however to practice the frugality and sustainability we preach...........learn to turn off the fossil gas (methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than CO2) learn to insulate and use heat pumps....retrofit if we can afford it........find ways to live communally.....and reduce our individual carbon footprint as much as possible.
We need to become early adopters of clean energy and clean grids wherever we can......and as fast as we can. I keep hoping for a movement that will with hold the percentage of our taxes that go to the war machine........if we all did it, they wouldn't have enough jails to put us in.
And we could put the money we with held into green technologies....start a sun worshipping cult to replace the war cult so prevalent now.
Effects on agricultural productivity and reduction in food supply will force famine, death, and even more migration. This likely will be the first mass casualty event.
And we first worlders hate and fear the immigrants, while remaining oblivious of what we've done to force them to flee their homelands.........and its not just climate disasters......its our proxy wars.
The link between ecocide and militarism is especially useful. I'll make sure to get it out to my networks. Thank you especially for the link to Malm's blog post.
1.) The 1/10th of 1% are used to buying anything they want, like public officials and private armies. Why stop before there is nothing left to extract from bottom wage workers and destroyed ecosystems? The ultra-privileged figure they'll be able to ride out the devastation on their megayachts and island refuges.
2.) Most people don't want to see the truth. If they do, then what alternatives are visible? Better to just ward off anxiety and depression with sports and consumer goods. We all know what happens to annoying dissenters. What if you lose your job--what would your family do? I remember my nieces and nephews as young people blaming us Boomers for the state of the world. They now have kids, live in McMansions, drive SUVs. But no prob, right? Good careers will always be there for people with the right education. All it takes is the Earth's resources being infinite with an endlessly expanding economy that defines away destruction of human and natural resources as irrelevant "externalities."
3.) The U.S. and W. Euro neolib/neocon cabal has one goal: unipolar power and control. To keep the econopathy and unipolar empire going as long as possible. In the short term, wars are profitable. In the long run, well, the neocons would resort to nukes to stay in power. The neolibs won't stop until all profits possible have strip mined. They conveniently ignore that they need us economic and actual cannon fodder. Eventually they'll need to replenish supplies and get equipment repaired. At some point, having no alternative, the rest of us will finally say NO. More and more Kim Stanley Robinson's 2022 eco sci-fi novel //The Ministry for the Future// looks prescient.
I'm tempted to say that wiping humans off the face of the Earth might be a good thing. If the damage could be directed at those who deserve it. But the indigenous peoples of the world shouldn't continue to pay for the sins of Enlightenment arrogance and colonial exploitation. Nor should the rest of the planet's beautiful and complex cooperative living beings--from slime molds to psilocybin fungi to coelacanths to maidenhair ferns to redwoods to cassowaries to giraffes to jaguars...
Another educating essay by Mr. Hedges. As I read this I'm getting ready to evacuate for the third hurricane in as many weeks. I live on the west coast of Florida. The state whose Governor has deleted the phrase climate change from official policies. No, I'm not kidding. Perhaps now that five percent will be motivated to do something.
We know about your governor in Canada......almost makes us believe there might be a God...given the retribution that is coming to your state, in part because of his ignorance.
A reflection upon the politics of climate collapse from New Zealand, written nearly a year ago upon the election of the present National government, whose blindness is our local version of the (almost!) universal climatic myopia. The reference to fixing 'potholes' is to an election promise made by the National Party. As the excess rains are undermining roads, this is a hiding to nowhere, so to make matters "better" the new government cut petrol tax to increase traffic density...! If you look up a pic of our esteemed leader, Chris Luxon, here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Luxon and look up one of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, you may see how NZ is beset by Chris in Wonderland... From giving women the vote, to the socialist government of the 1930s, to the instant adoption of mobile phones, NZ has symbolically lead the world as a microcosmic social laboratory. You will be pleased to note how exactly on form we still are....
Anthem for Doomed Youth
They said they are going to cut tax to the max,
And slash social spending despite the dire facts,
Of the accelerating losses of the climate crash,
Which will require humungous outlays of cash,
Not a tax-cutting induced public sector squeeze,
With a dumb neocon back-flip to 'do as you please',
To get us all 'back on track' to that dead-end game
Of carbonic growth, based upon more of the same,
Belching cows and motoring mania - with potholes!
To con carbonic consumers and more-growth trolls,
That our fossil-fuel fling ain't over yet: as we go on
Ignoring our woeful weather's howling swan song,
Like a 'Ship of Fools' blindly sailing into stormy seas,
Never thinking of being shipwrecked as no wheeze,
Or that the ultimate result of our false-faith's belief
In compound consumption, will be our terminal grief.
Paulo Pasquino
Election Day
17 Oct 2023
The title 'Anthem For Doomed Youth' is borrowed from Wilfred Owen’s
iconic WWI poem upon what had become "dead-end warfare" [in which]
“...fighting for survival becomes a murderous mutual madness.” - PP
"And we only need one to five percent of the population actively working for the overthrow of a system, history has shown, to bring down even the most ruthless totalitarian structures." A pivotal statement to remember and act from. Excellent essay.
“A tyrant needs above all a tyrant-state, so he will use a million little civil servant tyrants who each have a trivial task to perform, and each will perform that task competently, and without remorse, and no one will realize that he is the millionth link in the final act.”
From: Henri Verneuil‘s film I Comme Icare >>> Release date: Dec 19, 1979
I think we can manage 1% to 5%
I’m 90 - I shall try to demonstrate - if I want to leave the world a better place I haven’t much time left so I shall try to PROTEST
Wow Rosemary..well done. I am 75yrs and struggling to get to protests. Energy is going BUT like you I feel I have to do something.
And I commend you as well, for doing whatever you can. You're the reason that the "greater good" in the human condition still does live!
Thank you Rosemary! I will try to be like you. I'm only 70 but I too want to PROTEST. I object to what my Senators, Senator Tim Kaine and Senator Mark Warner are doing. I do not think they actually mean to harm anyone/anything. But they are allowing our public money to keep right on flowing into the extractive and warist military-industrial complex. They could and should stop the money. And we ordinary constituents here in Virginia or anywhere must force them to channel our public money toward meeting the real needs of Mother Earth.
Your spirit and determination are to be commended!
Chris writes a great article again. Thanks Chris. I see voting for Jill Stein as an act of resistance against our own ecocide, genocide regime. If Jill gets 5% of the vote, which she can, we can throw a wrench into the Uniparty system. For people of conscience, there is no real excuse to vote for either national party. Their scare tactics are silly arguments to ignore genocide and our endless war machine, while domestic needs for fighting climate change, building affordable housing, and a dozen other needs, are ignored. A woke 5% can change history, if we vote smart, and continue building the movement for change which students across the world have begun. We must act now.
Yes. Most readers haven't heard or read of the Jill Stein/Butch Ware run for the presidency. Corporate media censorship is alive and well... Alas... Ms. Stein is on the ballot in numerous States, and can navigate interviews and answer questions without a cue card...
https://www.jillstein2024.com/meet_jill Thank you for posting. Best regards.
Good for you!!
I did vote for Ms Stein as well, yesterday. And I already sent in my vote by mail ballot. I am not giving in to the BS of the two party corporate duopoly.
As I contemplate all the horrific events of the past quarter-century or so, and the abominable waste and harm that is being inflicted on the planet and >99% of its peoples, I continually wonder about those <1% who hold the reins of power here in The West. Are they certifiably insane, sociopaths and psychopaths not only little concerned with anyone else's welfare and happiness but actively displaying sadistic, or suicidal and ecocidal tendencies?
Is there method in their madness?
The <1% May Have a Plan - But it is not good news
https://peterwebster.substack.com/p/the-1-may-have-a-plan
Sociopaths and psychopaths always rise to the top of any system, for they are the ones who will do Whatever It Takes to get power.
It is also dependent on certain material and cultural conditions for them to flourish: there must be a food surplus for them to be able to monopolise and support a hierarchy of underlings, and the community must be large enough to allow them to evade detection and pass on their genes.
'In a 1976 study anthropologist Jane M. Murphy, then at Harvard University found that an isolated group of Yupik-speaking Inuits near the Bering Strait had a term (kunlangeta) they used to describe "a man who ... repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and ... takes sexual advantage of many women—someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always being brought to the elders for punishment." When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, "Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking."' (Lilienfeld and Arkowitz, 2007)
It is not inevitable that they rise to possess power. Psychopathy, which is at least moderately heritable, almost is never associated with high intelligence, and the majority of those with it end up in prison for petty crimes and lack of impulse control. A lack of empathy is confused by the sufferer for higher intelligence, yet average IQ is practically genius level for psychopathy. This is to great advantage of the society that wants to eliminate them and turn the selection against them, permanently.
Among hunter-gatherers, such people are discarded. But the emergence of agriculture and the dawn of civilisation has allowed such people to flourish. I rather doubt this is not a sign of our own immaturity that we have not learned to deal with such people appropriately. If we survive, and don't learn to deal with such people, they will probably become a different species like H.G. Wells imagined, except with the elites instead being social parasites akin to slave-making ants that rely on others to do all their work for nothing in return. They already do not resemble the rest of humanity in behaviour and phenotype.
Humanity needs a spiritual reawakening and rethinking of structures and ills in our society whose existence we take for granted, as if it must always be so.
Hello Emma. The Inuit and many other hunter/gatherer clans were anything but socially primitive. Modern psychologist's have been trained to indoctrinate society toward "integrating" psychopathic behaviors into the social norm. Interesting that... Here's an allegedly 'primitive' notion. >>> "A woman of virtue does not allow such child to escape the discretion's of her kitchen. For if such were permitted; thieves and robbers would soon arrive at the gate, and all in her care would be chastened…" - Paul Vonharnish - (Interpreted from the Book of Changes)
Far as I can tell, human society, regardless of material and cultural conditions, is basically the coalition of beta males to prevent the alphas from monopolizing females and resources.
There are plenty of examples of psychopaths and sociopaths among hunter gatherers, and among chimps, for that matter. Napoleon Chagnon describes the phenomenon among the Yanonamo of South America, for instance.
When humans created the concept of artificial wealth commodifying everything imaginable, including the very environment upon which we depend for life itself, there was no turning back from the suicidal path we are now on, like a bunch of bulls in a china shop. Humans were never an intelligent species, but rather a clever one that wantonly did things without having the ability to think things through beforehand, or even worse simply did not care as long as it brought them more and more of their make believe wealth. Enjoy the remaining days we have left as they are running out exponentially now.
“Man joined the eternal abyss - When food became a commodity”
- Paul Vonharnish - (January 2, 2020)
Spot on.
I want to apologize to the internet and Truth for previously posting comments that questioned Israeli plans to exploit the off shore gas reserved as a cause of the Gaza genocide. I was ignorant of the facts and lazy and viewed this as a diversion. I just read the Malm links and agree that gas is no doubt a significant issue. I don't think I posted those comments here, but I do know I posted them somewhere!
In the even larger picture, the reason the U.S. supports Israel is because it sees it as its proxy in the Middle East to control the oil and oil routes there. (As Biden said, if Israel didn't exist, we'd have had to invent it." It's been called "Our unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the region. No exaggeration to say the existence and persistence of Israel is all about oil. And no accident it is being used by the U.S. as our proxy against Iran, not to mention Russia and the BRICS.
U.S. population does not support Israel, only the bribed politicians do, and their unsinkable aircraft carrier already sunk our democracy.
So sorry.......but what you say is true. I'm using only cash now, unwilling to give anything, even pennies, to your fascistic republic. But I studied there in my youth, and have many happy memories of beautiful Massachusetts and the friends I left behind when I returned to Canada. But thank my stars daily, that I did return to Canada. I have only empathy for the good people of your country.
We all discover we know only a slim part of the puzzle. I had heard of the gas fields, and live in a petrostate now run be dumb fascists (are there any other kind?) but the racist or nationalist diversions the powerful are willing to create to make joe public think the problem is terrorists, not fossil fools perpetuating ecocide, because it pays.......are many.
And most of us are more alone than we realize.......the more we know, the more alone. Be kind to yourself....apologizing for past error is the mark of a good person. Be well.
In my nearly 80 years of life I have seen one climate prediction after another fail to deliver as promised. It is politics, not science. I clearly remember the impending Ice Age from the 1970s. That one didn't happen either.
A computer model is a STATEMENT OF A HYPOTHESIS. It is not proof of ANYTHING. Our entire civilization is built on fossil fuels and has been since prehistoric times.
End fossil fuels and civilization dies. You will starve to death in the freezing darkness.
Models are the curse of our time. People who don't understand the concept of models treat them as having come down the mountain with the 10 commandments. Written in stone, and from "God". They are neither. At best they are a way to conceptualize the world. Good models allow predictive action such as being able design a bridge, because you have a model that allows you to predict the strength of the steel & concrete structure and at what point it will fail.
(even that is suspect, because there are always unknowns such as manufacturing flaws, etc.)
Climate science models aren't about building bridges. They correlate the changes that global heating brings with it.........its systems theory science....and I believe its more robust than any engineering feat of human engineers.
Everything is connected.........and rapid rises in greenhouse gases.....not just CO2, but water vapour, methane etc........quite accurately predicted the weather we're experiencing now.....
Not with the exactitude we've come to expect from classical laboratory experiments.....but the patterns still prevail, and say in more ways than one: WE'RE IN FOR IT.
I wish you were right, but the science says you're not. And the science that predicts what Chris describes isn't classic science....that old system of reduce the variables so your experiments can achieve as close to certainty as possible brought us many discoveries...and medicines. It also brought us better dying with chemistry, plastics and the nuclear bomb.
The science of climate change is chaos theory science....made possible by big data tracking big systems. As the CO2 and other greenhouse gases multiply, positive feedback loops kick in that push the system to new orders of magnitude. Warmer seas, stronger hurricanes, more rain since warmer seas make more water vapour........itself a greenhouse gas. More torrential rains, more flash floods, mud slides and devestated infrastructure. You see it on the nightly news now from your south easter coastal states.
But then there's also drought...which we're experiencing in western Canada...and that makes for more fire, and fire beasts that have energies just slightly lower than an A bomb. Run for your life is about all you can do in those scenarios......houses were gutted to the foundations in five minutes or less in Fort MacMurray in 2016.....remember Paradise??? Hellfire a better name for that lost homeland.
We're upsetting a global stability that has endured for centuries with our fossil fool societies....and endless machines. Even AI is an extinction technolgy, since it will use mega amounts of electricity we actually need to decarbonize our homes and transportation grid.
There is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence...but the Moronic elites have figured out they'll need it when the workers are all dead from fire, flood, pestilance and famine. So to Hell with building a green world........steady on to the gated communities of the truly deserving.
And oh yes: God Bless Amerika.
No, actually, ending fossil fuels would give us a chance.
We'd still have to do everything we could to lower the CO2 already baked in to the atmosphere.......it will be up there for centuries....and dictate weather patterns we can only imagine.
"Our entire civilization is built on fossil fuels and has been since prehistoric times."
Until the modern industrial era, all energy was muscle and not derived from fossil fuels. You are talking rubbish, or if you aren't, you should elaborate. To the very best of my knowledge, the Rhomaioi of the Eastern Roman Empire [the 'Byzantines'] were the very first to harvest petroleum and use it basically for its modern purposes, i.e combustion in the form of naptha, Greek fire, and explosives, since crude oil could be found naturally rising to the surface near what is now Crimea at one time.
It is hard to pin an exact date on this due to much of it being state secrets and based on the work of alchemists in Asia Minor now lost to history, but this has not been possible for even two millennia if more than one, let alone for our "entire civilisation [to be] built on" it. The harvesting and use of fossil fuels is extremely new in human history.
"All this in their ignorance they called "civilisation," whilst in reality, it constituted a part of their slavery."—Cornelius Tacitus
Mr. regalo, you are citing your 80 yrs. of living as a proof that climate predictions don't work. I suppose that you are enjoying the same quality of air and water than when you were a baby and that neither you nor your family and friends have experienced the wrath of storms in the Philippines and all around the world. Perhaps even your home insurance and electric bills have not skyrocketed. If all of this is true, then you are an exceptionally lucky man though I'm tempted to believe that your case is more the effects dementia. But thank you for your regalo.
It all feels so hopeless…🥀🥀🥀
I agree Julia. BUT we HAVE to do something especially protest.
In Ithaca, NY, surrounded by trust funders and families still well protected, still msm informed, believing themselves progressive in a sea of signs for Kamala et al, my generation of boomers perseverating on self and wealth! Having been protesting on and on and on…voting Green since Nader…now supporting SteinWare however much I can….it would take millions of young people putting themselves on the line to even make a dent…🥀🥀🥀
I just read Robert Scheer ...............all we need is 5% of the population.
I shared it on notes if you are interested.
I know. And the saddest thing sometimes, is the obliviousness of your own children...nor is it a consolation that I'll be dead before the sh....t hits the fan for them.
It might be better to put up solar panels, buy an EV, stop plane travel....Action directed at discovering how we could live better with less might be more importand in many cases than protest. Grow your own food......waste nothing.......we can, freeze our rhubarb and raspberries, can our sour cherries.
We had none of this 15 years ago........but now are almost too old to do all the work of preserving the food we grow. Tomatoes this year are still ripening on the vine....I can them.......get tomato juice and diced tomatoes for pasta dishes...
I"ve recently decided not to use my credit cards.....cash saves my local merchant's money...and some of them take off the taxes if I give them cash. We have panels...and an EV......I have a second hand one on order for my daughter in law....
Boycott fossil fuels if possible; tell fossil fools why. Be vocal...what's the point of growing old if we can't be obstreperous?
A question for Minister Chris Hedges or anyone else: How is genocide and ecocide consistent with the idea that there is a just god? To me it is evidence that either god does not exist or it is different from the form Judeo Christian religions conceptualize god.
For one thing, if there is a divinity, it likely is female. I'm reading now in fungi and insects and micro fauna and often close to tears.........of a religious nature.
This planet has a genius for life........and contrary to the arrogance of our patriarchal religions......intelligence is in evidence everywhere. A mystery how it evolved, is evolving....but there are just too many wonderful discoveries being made now for me to reject the hypothesis that Nature is Divine. Read ENTANGLED LIFE by Merlin Sheldrake, or EXTRAORDINARY INSECTS by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, or BEING SALMON, BEING HUMAN, by Martin Lee Mueller...........and you might experience moments of religious ecstacy. I know I have, and it keeps me from the utter despair that our fossil fueled asylum is causing for many.
We do have a beautiful Mother...sad that Dad turned out to be such a psychopath.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. Personally I feel there is a force of nature that organizes things.
And organizes things for the best quite often. I read a lot now about the natural world. I've always loved her, grieve the losses she is experiencing now, the losses my beloved grandchildren may never realize existed.
And the more I read and learn, the more magical our Great Mother seems to me. I get shot down by patriarchs if I suggest the God of War is a psychopath....but the old boy fits the definition. Nature, in contrast, works for balance...Gaea and all her children...was the path we should have taken.
Alas......we like to engineer better worlds......straighten rivers, imagine we can 'steer hurricanes', contemplate geo engineering and imagine Carbon Capture and Storage works........if the public will only pay for it.
Did we ask Nature's permission??? Hell no.........we just bulldozed ahead, improving on things to the end of the world. Our stupid society will likely even change my grandson......who said to me when he was 8 or 9, standing in a field of prairie long grass: I LOVE NATURE. SHE HAS EVERYTHING. I'M NOT AFRAID OF HER.
And than the wonderkin lifted a daddy long legs from the grass, showed her to me, and then replaced her.
What he faces in the future, no God knows....but I fear for him and for all our children.
I, as an agnostic, don't ask if there is a god or not but rather if is it possible for us humans to know if there is a god or not. I think your question was addressed by Greek philosopher Epicurus, in his Aphorisms, stated it as early as 300 B.C.: The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are both able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?
Thank you for your thoughtful response,
With hurricanes in southeastern part of the United States Mother Nature is fighting back against the man made climate disaster that is unfolding. Human beings are arrogant, believe they are the center of the universe. In the big picture they are insignificance and in the long run if they do not develop a cooperation relationship with nature they are going to be destroyed, which would be the best outcome to save what is left of the earth and it’s innocent creatures which does not include humans!
The devastation from Hurricane Helene is all around me. I live in central Florida, not far from the Gulf coast. And as I write this we are seemingly in the bullseye of another storm/hurricane, this one called Milton. The destruction already so vivid, all around us, may be pushed aside by even more nightmarish devastation. This is the result of our trashing the planet. Not so much in the last five-ten years but in the last hundred-or more! Mother is simply responding to the fever which we, Homo Sapiens, have wrought upon her. Humans are a blight upon this planet, for the most part, and our hubris and unquenchable greed may turn. among other places like the Carolina's, my beloved Florida into a scene from a futuristic nuclear war movie. I am saddened for my precious grandchildren, who are now the recipients of the chaos which they had NO role in producing. Forget all this "praying" nonsense; the people who say 'God is protecting me" must have forgotten their neighbors, who were drowned or killed by falling trees or electrocuted. This is not about "God"; this is action/ reaction, and physics 101. All I can do is hunker down and try to protect my loved ones. We are all reaping the Whirlwind. I wish all of you well
I pray for your grandkids and for you........thanks for this epistle from the eye of the storm. Stay well and goddess bless.
A bunch of us wrote about the oil fields off the coast of Gaza and Lebanon and how Israel is justifying the genocide to get that oil last November. The only thing that has changed is the resistance fighters who are hanging on a year later with little signs of defeat. Hezbollah is joining the fray so Netanyahu's plans to get even wealthier are now going up in missile smoke. This is the unsaid reason why the U.S. and the E.U. have been supporting this war. Oil or the promise of such, if Israel can secure the coastlines and much of the lands going eastward. France has now backed off completely, with others soon to follow. Germany's government is under pressure to stop the arms sales as their industrial economy is collapsing. That leaves the U.K. and the U.S. as standalone supporters, with an ever growing restlessness within the general public.
As someone aptly wrote in the comments, without the constant flow of oil to the west, it will collapse. Germany is a good example since they lost access to Russian oil and gas in the last couple of years. The U.S. will be another one if they lose access to the oil they think they need. Their history with oil embargoes from the last 50 to 60 years is their example.
The end of the fossil fuel age is at hand. One way or another, societies and cultures will be remade as the oil flows become diminished. The flow of oil will diminish because it is a finite commodity and it is starting to run low in traditional places in the middle east. This is one of the reasons why the west is fighting so hard against Maduro in Venezuela, and other places outside of the middle east in order to maintain their unipolar hegemon. They need to keep the oil flowing in order to prop up their failing economy, which maintains their failing military prowess.
It won't be much longer, maybe within the next twenty years or so, if not less, before the U.S. empire and its proxies will fade out and a new world order will rise in its place. Whether it will be something better remains to be seen. In the meantime, expect more wars over oil.
I hope you're right, but I fear that the rising emissions are pushing us into an overshoot we won't recover from for centuries, if ever. It does seem important now however to practice the frugality and sustainability we preach...........learn to turn off the fossil gas (methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than CO2) learn to insulate and use heat pumps....retrofit if we can afford it........find ways to live communally.....and reduce our individual carbon footprint as much as possible.
We need to become early adopters of clean energy and clean grids wherever we can......and as fast as we can. I keep hoping for a movement that will with hold the percentage of our taxes that go to the war machine........if we all did it, they wouldn't have enough jails to put us in.
And we could put the money we with held into green technologies....start a sun worshipping cult to replace the war cult so prevalent now.
Effects on agricultural productivity and reduction in food supply will force famine, death, and even more migration. This likely will be the first mass casualty event.
And we first worlders hate and fear the immigrants, while remaining oblivious of what we've done to force them to flee their homelands.........and its not just climate disasters......its our proxy wars.
The link between ecocide and militarism is especially useful. I'll make sure to get it out to my networks. Thank you especially for the link to Malm's blog post.
The horror will go on for several reasons.
1.) The 1/10th of 1% are used to buying anything they want, like public officials and private armies. Why stop before there is nothing left to extract from bottom wage workers and destroyed ecosystems? The ultra-privileged figure they'll be able to ride out the devastation on their megayachts and island refuges.
2.) Most people don't want to see the truth. If they do, then what alternatives are visible? Better to just ward off anxiety and depression with sports and consumer goods. We all know what happens to annoying dissenters. What if you lose your job--what would your family do? I remember my nieces and nephews as young people blaming us Boomers for the state of the world. They now have kids, live in McMansions, drive SUVs. But no prob, right? Good careers will always be there for people with the right education. All it takes is the Earth's resources being infinite with an endlessly expanding economy that defines away destruction of human and natural resources as irrelevant "externalities."
3.) The U.S. and W. Euro neolib/neocon cabal has one goal: unipolar power and control. To keep the econopathy and unipolar empire going as long as possible. In the short term, wars are profitable. In the long run, well, the neocons would resort to nukes to stay in power. The neolibs won't stop until all profits possible have strip mined. They conveniently ignore that they need us economic and actual cannon fodder. Eventually they'll need to replenish supplies and get equipment repaired. At some point, having no alternative, the rest of us will finally say NO. More and more Kim Stanley Robinson's 2022 eco sci-fi novel //The Ministry for the Future// looks prescient.
I'm tempted to say that wiping humans off the face of the Earth might be a good thing. If the damage could be directed at those who deserve it. But the indigenous peoples of the world shouldn't continue to pay for the sins of Enlightenment arrogance and colonial exploitation. Nor should the rest of the planet's beautiful and complex cooperative living beings--from slime molds to psilocybin fungi to coelacanths to maidenhair ferns to redwoods to cassowaries to giraffes to jaguars...
Another educating essay by Mr. Hedges. As I read this I'm getting ready to evacuate for the third hurricane in as many weeks. I live on the west coast of Florida. The state whose Governor has deleted the phrase climate change from official policies. No, I'm not kidding. Perhaps now that five percent will be motivated to do something.
We know about your governor in Canada......almost makes us believe there might be a God...given the retribution that is coming to your state, in part because of his ignorance.
A reflection upon the politics of climate collapse from New Zealand, written nearly a year ago upon the election of the present National government, whose blindness is our local version of the (almost!) universal climatic myopia. The reference to fixing 'potholes' is to an election promise made by the National Party. As the excess rains are undermining roads, this is a hiding to nowhere, so to make matters "better" the new government cut petrol tax to increase traffic density...! If you look up a pic of our esteemed leader, Chris Luxon, here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Luxon and look up one of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, you may see how NZ is beset by Chris in Wonderland... From giving women the vote, to the socialist government of the 1930s, to the instant adoption of mobile phones, NZ has symbolically lead the world as a microcosmic social laboratory. You will be pleased to note how exactly on form we still are....
Anthem for Doomed Youth
They said they are going to cut tax to the max,
And slash social spending despite the dire facts,
Of the accelerating losses of the climate crash,
Which will require humungous outlays of cash,
Not a tax-cutting induced public sector squeeze,
With a dumb neocon back-flip to 'do as you please',
To get us all 'back on track' to that dead-end game
Of carbonic growth, based upon more of the same,
Belching cows and motoring mania - with potholes!
To con carbonic consumers and more-growth trolls,
That our fossil-fuel fling ain't over yet: as we go on
Ignoring our woeful weather's howling swan song,
Like a 'Ship of Fools' blindly sailing into stormy seas,
Never thinking of being shipwrecked as no wheeze,
Or that the ultimate result of our false-faith's belief
In compound consumption, will be our terminal grief.
Paulo Pasquino
Election Day
17 Oct 2023
The title 'Anthem For Doomed Youth' is borrowed from Wilfred Owen’s
iconic WWI poem upon what had become "dead-end warfare" [in which]
“...fighting for survival becomes a murderous mutual madness.” - PP