If there's any lesson to be learned from the unfolding climate disaster and 28 COP failures, it's that as long as governments cede power to corporations and billionaires, and as long as those corporations and billionaires make money from ecological destruction, then ecological destruction is what we get.

Peter Gleick

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

George Bernard Shaw

There is now no conceivable way we can stay under 1.5°C of mean global heating. We probably still had that chance a few years ago, but it has been squandered out of political cowardice, media distraction, apathy, a steady diet of false hope and false solutions, and above all a continued stream of disinformation and legalized bribes from the fossil fuel industry. The more fossil fuel we burn, the hotter the planet will get. This is basic, incontrovertible, unassailable physics. It's a dead certainty. And the people currently in charge are still doing everything they can to expand fossil fuels.

Peter Kalmus

A pathology of conservativism is that 'things used to be simple.' No, you used to be a kid. Your parents shielded you from life's complexity. Things are complex because you're an adult now. Conservativism is the desire to be a child.

Cory Doctorow

[On the Voice to Parliament referendum] Come Sunday, we will either see ourselves as measured, generous people, ready to set aside the daily woes of our lives – only for a few minutes – to consider the place and state of Indigenous Australians, prepared to say yes to something which will cost us nothing, but could measurably improve their lives.
Or as a frightened, resentful people unable or unwilling to see through the scares and the lies, prepared to use the ballot box to punish the government and in the process punish Indigenous people trapped in cycles of poverty and abuse.
In the post-mortems which will inevitably continue for decades, we can and we will blame No campaigners for playing filthy dirty, for putting politics above everything else, for using loudhailers to whistle up the neo-Nazis, racists and bigots with lies and misrepresentations.
The demons unleashed by tactics to foment conflict, for short term political gain at the expense of vulnerable Australians, will live on long after Saturday’s vote.
[https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-miserable-fact-of-the-voice-we-were-always-destined-to-get-to-this-point-20231011-p5ebcs.html]

Niki Savva

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals. … Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

Albert Einstein

“Do I really need to wear a mask forever in a hospital or doctor's office?!?” is the new...
“Do I really have to wear a seatbelt for every car trip, no matter how short?” or
“Do I really have to stop smoking in my own office at work?!?” or
“Do I really have to stop drinking the water from the Broad Street pump?” [source of a cholera outbreak]
No one ever welcomes new rules and practices that keep us safe. They always reject them--until they stop and adopt the sensible rules.

Augie Ray

Climate change is now reaching the end game, where soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

Warren Mundine demonstrates how ridiculous racism is. He is just as big a snivelling, grasping, venal, lying spiv as the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

BlotReport

We must either defy the corporate state or accept our extinction as a species. We have been stripped of the power to express dissent or effect change. Rebellion is the only way to remain fully human.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/rise-up-or-die/

Chris Hedges