from the memebrary – original source unknown
As the image above suggests, we have seemingly reached the point at which our feeble and incompetent attempts to come to grips with this civilization’s accelerating collapse have descended to sheer absurdity. We have, in our outrage and learned helplessness, installed demented, mentally-challenged and traumatized ‘leaders’ in positions of power, and allowed them to steal all our money, our public resources, and our fragile freedoms, seemingly because we can no longer believe that anyone could do a worse job of administering this collapse than those we have tried before.
And in that, we might be right — a world in collapse is essentially ungovernable — if our civilization of massive, centralized, cobbled-together systems ever was governable.
So now we have a steady succession of atrocities — genocides, trumped-up wars designed strictly to distract us from seeing the truth of what the war-mongers have consistently and bumblingly wrought in everything they have done, extra-judicial murders committed by deranged War Ministers with Nazi tattoos, and the inept and psychotic dismantling of the Ship of State by mush-brained billionaires and brain-worm-infested conspiracy theorists. And an ‘opposition’ that offers nothing but “vote these clowns out, if you can, and we promise not to be quite so bad, that is if our billionaires will permit us; please?”.
It really is absurd, and one of our instinctive human responses to absurdity is to laugh. That’s probably a healthier response than allowing the rich and powerful circus performers whacking each other with plastic mallets to manipulate us into cowed obedience or helpless outrage, so we all stay in our place as they oversee our civilization’s final chapter.
Still, it is interesting to note some subtle perturbations in the zeitgeist: For example, the most listened to song of 2025, by a large margin, was a song about collapse.
COLLAPSE WATCH
Chart by Tim Watkins: when the two red lines intersect, sometime in the next five years or so, we will have reached the stage at which hydrocarbon energy, which we are utterly dependent on and which has produced 100% of all the economic ‘growth’ of the past two centuries, becomes at once too expensive for us to afford to buy, and too low-priced to be economic for even massively-subsidized producers to bring to market. ‘Peak oil’ was never about running out of oil; it has always been about running out of affordable oil.
James Hansen, persona non grata: The acclaimed environmental scientist explains why the IPCC is no longer reporting his research on climate collapse, because it’s too discouraging, too honest, too critical of the IPCC’s political sponsors, and, well, completely unprofitable. Thanks to DrS for the link.
The state of collapse: Erik Michaels provides another of his regular updates about where we stand in the current ‘polycrisis’ of collapse. (Full disclosure: He references one of my recent articles at some length.)
A new theory about political collapse: Cory D explains the concept of “political capitalism” and how it is an endgame strategy for capitalizing on political collapse.
The ‘zero state’: The Honest Sorcerer describes what happens to political states when, unable to accomplish their stated intentions as everything falls apart around them, political parties reach a state of “moral exhaustion” and abandon their ideals and principles in favour of the simpler calculus of just holding on to power.
LIVING BETTER
part of a new series of fridge magnets
On the virtue of reading with your kids: A lovely bit of writing from the senior editor at Harpers on the magic of sharing the world of reading with children, and its enduring benefits. It’s about how “the qualities associated with genius are simply what emerge when children aren’t taught that certain experiences are beyond them“. This article has all the elements of great writing that I keep talking about. Strangely, it’s in the same edition of Harpers that includes not one, but two Victorian-esque articles about the evils of self-pleasuring. (It’s a sin, you know, and will make you antisocial.) Another goodie from this remarkable and erratic magazine in the Politics section below.
Another Lewis strives to fix the broken Canadian political landscape: Avi Lewis, following in the admirable but unsuccessful footsteps of his father and grandfather, is doing what no other political leader has dared to do: challenge the Canadian power status quo on both oil & gas development and the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Long uphill climb, Avi; I wish you well. Thanks to Sharon Goldberg for the link.
Dave Smith, eco-pioneer, RIP: Dave died in 2022, and his work and legacy remains largely unrecognized. He was a pioneer in the US organic food movement (alongside Cesar Chavez), a permaculturalist, radical bookstore owner, writer and local agitator, and founder of many small eco enterprises selling everything from farm tools to seeds to garden furniture. I was honoured that he agreed to write the introduction to my book Finding the Sweet Spot. His wisdom lives on through his extraordinary book To Be Of Use. The title says it all; the purpose that drove everything he did.
Bogotá, Colombia recognizes the unpaid work of women and other care-givers: The city’s pioneering and enormously successful ‘care blocks’ are being studied as a model for the rest of the world. Thanks to Siyavash for the link.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL
Thanks mostly to some religious anti-vax communities in Alberta and Ontario, measles is now surging in Canada, nearly 30 years after it was eradicated; a similar declaration for the US is pending. Thanks to YLE for the chart.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This: That’s the title of Canadian Giller-Prize-winner Omar El Akkad’s book about the Gaza genocide, and about the cynical and entrenched political system that ruthlessly enabled it to be launched, and enables it, and other criminal and inhumane atrocities like it, to continue to this day.
From Harper’s magazine, Pankaj Mishra’s savage and devastating indictment of neoliberalism and the uninterrupted western uniparty administrations that have concealed their relentless racist, genocidal, hate-driven and imperialist ambitions behind a mask of demonizing and defeating ‘othered’ ‘totalitarian’ states and opposing any non-conforming ideologies as evil. You won’t read this in any ‘mainstream’ news media or magazines today, including those that once espoused ‘liberal’ values. Excerpt:
Trump’s sinister achievement is to delegitimize the old intellectual and political establishment while at the same time cementing the racial hierarchies and regimes of repression that this elite exploited during the ‘war on terror’. In yet another parody of the “responsibility to protect” hucksters, the white-supremacist president also wishes to be seen as the authentic savior of a benighted world at war.
Western liberalism, constantly searching for monsters abroad, turns out to have been a moral mask for an intellectual service class—a fashion accessory tossed aside by Trump. It is of no use to those presiding over a swift and brutal reversal of racial progress. It should not surprise us how quickly the nineteenth-century prejudice that white men should dominate “inferior” Africans, Asians, and Latin American peoples has become common sense for much of Western politics and journalism. “The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface,” Arendt warned in 1950, after the nineteenth-century ideologies of racial aggrandizement had achieved a monstrous culmination in the heart of Europe. That subterranean stream has again come to the surface in 2025, and it is sweeping away the once-unassailable idea of the West.
Imperialism, Militarism & Fascism: Short takes:
- Trump calls for the execution of Democratic party leaders for daring to suggest that the military have a duty to disobey illegal orders.
- Venezuela attempted coup leader and Nobel ‘peace prize’ ‘winner’ pledges to privatize $1.7T of Venezuela’s public assets once Trump imposes regime change there. You can’t make this shit up.
- Canada is still supplying bombs to Israeli military, using US intermediaries. Wonder if they charged tariffs.
- British article explaining the truth of the Ukraine war, from 2015, resurfaces.
- Canada’s justice system still offers no justice to sexual violence survivors.
- When complex systems break, corruption rushes in. Case in point, Scott Adams using Trump connection to jump the queue for health care. If you’re rich and powerful, you can now get away with anything.
- The UN Security Council, astonishingly, adopts the Israeli-American “peace plan” that allows the genocide and ethnic cleansing to continue.
- Japan abandons longstanding pacifist resolutions and vows to front the US war against China.
- A deep and balanced dive into the Trump “peace plan” for Ukraine.
- Three-part series direct from the West Bank on Israel’s continuing genocide and ethnic cleansing by Cara Mariana Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
- NATO plans “pre-emptive” strikes on Russia, based on misinformation.
- Zelenskyy systematically undermines attempt to prosecute corruption in Ukraine.
- Canada’s First Nations unanimously reject ecologically disastrous federal-Alberta plan for yet another bitumen sludge pipeline.
- A motion in the US Congress would abolish dual citizenship for Americans.
- Another motion in the US Congress would “automatically” register all young people for a potential compulsory military service draft.
- Trump pardons Honduras ex-president and illegal drug czar. And his bombing attacks on Venezuelan ships are for what purpose, again?
- What’s the real reason for the US war on Venezuela? Hint: Follow the money.
- And Trump-Hegseth have pirated a Venezuelan oil tanker headed to Cuba, and stolen its cargo
- The EU is making moves to permanently steal frozen ‘sanctioned’ Russian bank accounts. If you think your money is safe in your bank account, think again.
Propaganda, Censorship, Misinformation and Disinformation: Short takes:
- The NYT ‘editorial board’ issues multi-part clarion call for trillions in military investment for war with China and Russia. Even the first sentence is a discredited lie.
- Britain’s Channel 4 publicly-owned TV channel unleashes anti-Russia propaganda campaign. The first comment below the video betrays the lie in one sentence.
- The “moral certainty” groupthink of “just-oppose-Trump” blue-MAGA Democrats
Corpocracy & Unregulated Capitalism: Short takes:
- Goldman Sachs urges massive investment in AI even acknowledging the bubble and coming crash. It’s now “strategic” investment to pump and dump stocks, since it’s the only way to make money when everything’s falling apart and wildly overvalued.
- The utter failure of AI “chatbots” for corporate “customer service”.
- On corporate executives’ capitalize-on-collapse prepper fantasies.
- Sorry no electricity for you. AI corporations need it all for server farms, and they’re buying up the electricity market.
- And maybe the solution to them buying it up, as well as regulatory capture, is publicly-owned power utilities. Ya think?
- How corporations prey on our guilt about poverty and homelessness.
- How AI-driven surveillance preying-on-disadvantage pricing is driving up customers’ costs and corporate profits.
- A very long and detailed qualified defence of the use of AI by us little end-users, by Cory, pointing out that “AI is a bubble and it will burst. Most of the companies will fail. Most of the data-centers will be shuttered or sold for parts” and that there will some useful salvage from its collapse, and that “It’s the bubble that sucks, not these [consumer] applications”, and it’s the dysfunctional and extravagant use by corporations that is driving that bubble, not our chatbot sessions, and that the fear of AI gaining ‘sentience’ is sci-fi hokum.
- The problem isn’t fascism, it’s corporatism. Which is the term Mussolini used for fascism. Skip the interview video and just read Evelyn’s notes below to understand how corporatist “inverted totalitarianism” works, and gets a fascist veneer so we fight the “other side” instead of the corporatists.
- Bonus: Interview with Cory, summarizing “Enshittification”. Yes by the same channel mongering for war with Russia. But Krishnan’s OK.
Administrative Mismanagement & Incompetence: Short takes:
- NATO and the US-UK-Euro military and administrations are gearing up for a catastrophically expensive war with Russia and China they can’t possibly ‘win’.
- Even Republicans are investigating the deranged War Sec Hegseth’s “kill everybody” orders to the military forces bombing Venezuelan ships. I can’t believe I just typed that sentence.
- BC’s extreme (racist, misogynist, anti-LGBT, privatize everything) Conservative leader John Rustad was ousted by his party’s Board. He refused to step down. Apparently he wasn’t extremely conservative enough. Chaos ensued. He decided to resign after all. Welcome to the circus!
Department of Health Prevention: Short takes:
- The problem with the US system is private health care, not just private equity’s takeover of it. We’re patients, not customers.
- CDC adopts JFK Jr’s lunatic anti-vax conspiracy theories. And how to deal with that mess.
- Boris Johnson’s dithering and delaying CoVid-19 lockdowns cost 23,000 British lives.
- Both Health Canada’s and Canadian federal and provincial governments’ ideological opposition to safe supply programs continues to cause massive injuries, suffering, and deaths, internal Health Canada documents show. BC’s human rights commissioner agrees.
FUN AND INSPIRATION
from the memebrary
The responsibility that comes with fame, power and wealth: Hank Green, now a quite famous person, talks about how those things can corrupt, upset, and attract sometimes-unfair criticism, and possibly make you paranoid and insensitive in the process.
How things work in these here parts: The Onion satirizes the forces of “law and order” with a clever summary of how restorative justice works. Thanks to Kavana Tree Bressen for the link.
Now research that shows our cognitive skills decline: A new study reveals alarming recent increases in several indicators of cognitive impairment, especially among younger generations. Thanks to Erik Michaels for the link.
The mystery of the Chinese Star Gauge: A 1700-year-old magic square of 4,000 poems. Thanks to Bart Anderson for the link.
… which is kinda what Erich Fromm told us 50 years ago: An article from the extraordinary archive of wisdom penned by Maria Popova summarizes Erich’s main arguments about how our modern civilization is rendering us insane. Thanks to Gerry Gras for the link. Excerpt:
The most pernicious effect of any given social order, Fromm suggests, is that it breeds a culture of truth by consensus rather than truth by evidence, truth relative to collective opinion rather than absolute truth — the sort of relativism which Karl Popper memorably admonished is “a betrayal of reason and of humanity.” In another passage of astounding pertinence today, as we witness a global groupthink elect destructive ideas to the status of truth and therefore power, Fromm observes something as true of religious delusions as it is of ruinous political ideologies:
“What is so deceptive about the state of mind of the members of a society is the ‘consensual validation’ of their concepts. It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health… The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
Ursula Le Guin on “being a man”: Also from Maria, some delicious excerpts from Ursula’s The Wave in the Mind, including this one:
I am a man. Now you may think I’ve made some kind of silly mistake about gender, or maybe that I’m trying to fool you, because my first name ends in a, and I own three bras, and I’ve been pregnant five times, and other things like that that you might have noticed, little details. But details don’t matter… I predate the invention of women by decades. Well, if you insist on pedantic accuracy, women have been invented several times in widely varying localities, but the inventors just didn’t know how to sell the product. Their distribution techniques were rudimentary and their market research was nil, and so of course the concept just didn’t get off the ground. Even with a genius behind it an invention has to find its market, and it seemed like for a long time the idea of women just didn’t make it to the bottom line. Models like the Austen and the Brontë were too complicated, and people just laughed at the Suffragette, and the Woolf was way too far ahead of its time.
THOUGHTS OF THE MONTH
from the memebrary
From Howard Zinn (thanks to Caitlin Johnstone for the link, in her wonderfully-titled article On Becoming The First Species To Go Extinct From Politeness:
As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.
From Loren Eiseley (thanks to Maria Popova for the link, from her essay Love Anyway):
Eiseley recounts resting beneath a tree after a day of trekking through fern and pine needles collecting fossils, dozing off in the warm sunlight, then being suddenly awakened by a great commotion to see “an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak” perching on a crooked branch above. He writes:
Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents. No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death. And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable. The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death.
