We are no more immune to the forces of decay and death than were ancient Athens, ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, the Mayans, the Aztecs, Easter Island, Europe’s feudal society of lords and serfs, and the monarchal empires in early 20th-century Europe. Human nature has not changed. We will react as those before us reacted when they faced collapse. We will be increasingly consumed by illusion. We will seek to stop time, to prevent change, to embrace magical thinking in a desperate effort to return to an idealized past. Many will suffer. This time, collapse will be planetwide. There will be no new lands to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate, no new natural resources to plunder and exploit. Climate change will teach us a brutal lessen about hubris. The wages of sin, as Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans, is death—first moral and intellectual death and then physical death. The first, we already are experiencing. It would be reassuring to believe we could as a species avoid the second. But if human history is any guide, we are in for it. And the worse it gets, the more we seek to thwart change through magical thinking, the more our eventual extinction as a species is assured. — Chris Hedges, The Wages of Sin
What are the circumstances that have led us to hold a congress such as the one we’re going to convene? Was it a question of principle to do it in April [i.e. exactly five years since the last Congress]? Could we not have waited a few more months so that the activist base as a whole would have an opportunity to read and express opinions on the documents, before they go to the Congress? I must say that I see no justification whatsoever for us committing the ‘grave political error’ of convening a Congress without the mass of grassroots activists — which I consider to be the real party — having access to the documents to be approved by the Congress in order to discuss them. Have we given up on being a Leninist party? I am yet to hear anyone tell me that. — Esteban Morales, The kind of Congress many of us wouldn’t have wanted
Quotes of the Day:
CIA’s Work With Filmmakers Puts All Media Workers at Risk By Adam Johnson
How Not to Audit the Pentagon: Five Decades Later, the Military Waste Machine Is Running Full Speed Ahead By William D. Hartung
Judge Denies Motions by Fossil Fuel Industry and Federal Government in Landmark Climate Change Case
Environment:
Monsanto’s Evil Twin: Disturbing Facts About the Fertilizer Industry By Martha Rosenberg and Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association
Capitalism And Global Agribusiness: From Ford To Monsanto, “It’s For Your Own Good” By Colin Todhunter
Merle Haggard and the Politics of Salmon by Dan Bacher
Global Fisheries Are Collapsing — What Happens When There Are No Fish Left? By Dahr Jamail
Ongoing/Big Energy Disasters!:
Keystone spill is more proof that pipelines are unsafe at any speed By Stuart Smith
Energy News:
Labor:
Economy:
Britain: #CameronResign – Tory government in crisis as Prime Minister embroiled in Panama scandal by Ben Gliniecki
The Corruption Revealed in the Panama Papers Opened the Door to Isis by Patrick Cockburn
Nuit debout protesters occupy French cities in revolutionary call for change: 
Health, Education and Welfare: