"The US alone has already spent more money on this conflict in the last two and a half weeks than the $23bn (€19.9bn) I need to save 87 million lives this year," said Tom Fletcher, a senior official at the United Nations.

https://euobserver.com/207273/us-war-spending-in-iran-could-have-saved-87-million-lives-says-un/

Really enjoy the entire world having to worry about the minute-to-minute emotional state of a 79-year old narcissistic rapist and fraudster. It really brings home how effective constitutional democracy actually is.

#USpol

The Story That Should Not Have Been:

This was not how the human story was meant to end..
Not with melting glaciers and rising walls.
Not with billionaires escaping upward while the oceans crept in.
Not with the silence of forests drowned out by the hum of devices..

We began with bare feet and open hands,
curious, uncertain, staring into the dark with fire in our eyes..
We learned to grow, gather, and grieve.
We built homes, songs, and systems.
We touched the moon.

And then....we touched nothing.
Nothing real.
Just numbers on screens and dopamine loops,
algorithms tighter than the bonds between neighbours.

We called it progress.
We made gods of GDP and efficiency.
We grew the economy like it was a crop,
and burned the soil beneath it.

We built machines that outpaced our wisdom.
Tools without elders.
Profit without pause.
Comfort without community.

The Earth groaned,
and we handed out loyalty cards.
The sky cracked,
and we installed air-conditioning.
We did not adapt... we monetised the crisis.

Democracy?
We sold that, too.
Votes drowned in money.
Truth fragmented by code.
Fear rebranded as policy.
The strongmen did not seize power.
We gave it to them...for stability, for screens, for noise.

Inequality?
Designed, not accidental.
A system where five men own more than half the world.
While billions hustle for rent,
they own the future, the data, the air.

Let us not pretend everyone chose this.
Some resisted.
Some warned.
Many were silenced,
while the architects of collapse called it freedom
and moved their assets offshore.

And now...
the insects are gone.
The water is plastic.
The children are anxious,
and the gods are corporations.

So we ask..
Is this how it ends?
The great arc of human becoming..
from toolmakers to terraformers to a footnote in a geology textbook?

It did not have to be this way.
The warnings were clear.
The crossroads came again and again,
and still, we pressed the accelerator.

But even now..
if there is a fragment of clarity left,
if there is one ember unextinguished....
let it burn for this:

Not a return to what was,
but a return to what matters.
Not endless expansion,
but rooted kinship.
Not empire,
but ecosystem.
Not more,
but enough.

Let it be said that we stood at the edge...
saw clearly,
named the failure,
and turned.
Not to be saved..
but to begin again.

#CollapseAware
#ClimateCrisis
#SystemChange
#DeepAdaptation
#ClimateJustice
#Anthropocene
#EcoGrief
#PostCapitalism