Biocentric

“ Truth is the first casualty of war.” — Aeschylus

This morning I was joined by my friend Justin McAffee of Collapse Curriculum to discuss the IOF-US attack on Iran. We covered:

* The blatant lies being peddled by the Trump Regime as “justifications” for this illegal war of aggression, women’s and human rights, and parallels with the invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). As Spain’s Irene Montero said:

“No woman has ever been freed by American bombs or illegal aggression. Not in Syria. Not in Iraq. Not in Lebanon. Not in Afghanistan. And it will not happen in Iran either. They hide behind women’s rights to justify their colonial wars.”

* The human and ecological costs of war, and the US military as the largest polluter on the planet.

* Sanctions as a weapon of economic warfare (neocolonialism) which has been responsible for 38 million deaths since 1970.

* US and IOF goals: preservation of the petrodollar, decapitation strategy, arming of insurgent groups, and analogues to Libya and Syria.

* The US and Israel as rogue theocratic oligarchies, including the influence of AIPAC on US politics and the desire to bring about a holy war, Armageddon, and the rapture.

* Asymmetric warfare strategy and the goals of the Iranian Regime.

* Military censorship in Israel and across the GCC covering up the extent of the damage inflicted by Iranian retaliation via drone strikes and missiles.

* Speculation about the extent of that damage: five F-15 fighter jets, dozens of drones, several radar arrays, and various military, CIA, and Mossad sites hit. As Trita Parsi writes:

“The pattern of the Trump administration's conduct - hapless efforts to justify the war, ever-shifting war objectives, exaggerated gestures to signal control - all suggest that, only a few days into the war, Trump has already lost control.”

* The “double tap” US air strike on “Shajareh Tayyebeh” (The Good Tree) school in the city of Minab in southern Iran, which killed 165 schoolgirls and staff, and the likelihood that AI chose the target.

* The ecological and economic impacts of the closure of the Straight of Hormuz and Iranian attacks on oil infrastructure and transportation across the GCC, as well as skyrocketing oil prices.

* The mainstream media’s thirst for war, parroting of government talking points, and alternative news sources worth following in times of war.

* Cosplay resistance from Democrats in Washington D.C. who, as they should have, forced a war powers resolution vote they knew would likely fail, yet many Democrats plan to vote in favor of $50 billion in war funding for the Pentagon.

Thank you Natalie Brite | DoGoodBiz, Jeanne Elbe, Nikos Giannakis, William E Rees, Trav London, and many others for tuning into this live video.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

The United States is a military empire.

It’s not a democracy, it’s an inverted totalitarian state in which a guise of representative government is used as cover for an oligarchy — rule by the wealthy.

It’s no surprise, then, that the United States is, along with its genocidal partner Israel, bombing Iran in an aggressive, illegal, and unprovoked war. That’s what this country does. Over and over and over again.

Hundreds of times.

This country was built by military conquest and either destruction or forced resettlement of indigenous people. The modern American lifestyle is maintained, as Thomas Friedman writes, by the “hidden fist” of the military:

“McDonalds cannot flourish without [arms manufacturer] McDonnell Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.”

The same is true of the theocratic genocide state, Israel. It and its partner, the United States, are the largest purveyors of terrorism in the world.

They do this for a simple reason: power. In 1948, George Kennan, then the Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department, wrote in Memo PPS23 that “[The United States has] about 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity...”

I share this quote over and over again, because it reveals nakedly, in their own words, the policy priorities of the United States government.

In the 70 years since Kennan wrote that memo, that “pattern of relationships” has been successfully devised and maintained. The US military is the largest in the world, with $1 trillion in annual funding and more than 2 million personnel (including reservists). And it wages war, openly and in the shadows, on all those who stand in the way of US hegemony.

The costs of this are incalculable. They range from the ecocidal, genocidal destruction of Vietnam and Cambodia to the horrors of Gulf War Syndrome to the toxic remnants of weapons manufactories in cities across the country to the legacy of depleted uranium rounds and birth defects in Fallujah. In Guatemala and El Salvador, the legacy of US-sponsored right-wing terrorism still echoes through shattered societies. In Nevada, Washington State, New Mexico, and across Oceania, indigenous lands remain irradiated from decades of weapons testing and nuclear waste which continues to seep into soils and groundwater which will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. The US military is the single largest polluter in the world, responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other entity.

Bullying psychopaths use violence because it is brutally effective in achieving their goals, and the people and the land are collateral damage. Missiles rain down on Iran. Thousands of civilians are dead. In modern war, 90% or more of casualties are innocent non-combatants: grandmothers and grandfathers, schoolchildren, shop owners, students, laborers. The mythology of precision bombs is a lie.

Wars always unleash unintended consequences. The overthrow of Iran’s prior socialist government by western powers led to the Khamenei taking power (with assistance from the US) in the Islamic Revolution. US weapons and funds bankrolled the mujaheddin and Osama Bin-Laden in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and led directly to 9/11. The invasion of Afghanistan created conditions for opium poppy cultivation to explode and led to the opioid epidemic on American streets. The fall of Saddam Hussein created the vacuum that was soon filled by ISIS. A million civilians died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The toppling of Gaddafi led to the breakup of Libya and the rise of an open slave trade in North Africa. The fall of Assad in Syria led former ISIS-affiliated militants into The People’s Palace. And the endless covert special operations spawned by the Global War on Terror fueled the rise of a black rifle worshipping patriarchal cult in the United States which has destabilized internal politics and driven a wave of violent white supremacism, domestic terrorism, ICE repression, authoritarian surveillance and policing, and fascist consolidation of power.

The ruling class doesn’t care. They care about maintaining and expanding their economic and military hegemony. They care about the great game. People are just pawns. So the bombs must fall. What will happen to Iran’s 93 million people and the rich ecology of the region isn’t important to them compared to the geopolitical value of removing a powerful adversary, consolidating US control over global oil supplies, and opening the way for expanded Israeli domination of the Middle East.

My activism began with opposition to war, back in the early 2000’s as the United States invaded Afghanistan, and then Iraq. It was in this time that the political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, speaking from death row, recorded the audio I shared at the beginning of this post:

This war in Iraq isn’t the end; it’s the beginning of wars to come all around the world at the whim of the neo-cons in the White House.

This is the Bush Doctrine come to life; war, war and more war. War brought to you by the big corporate-masters who run the show.

This isn’t just a war on Iraqis or Afghanis or Arabs, or even Muslims. It is ultimately a war on us all. That’s because the billions and billions that are being spent on this war — the cost of tanks, rocketry, bullets and yes, even salaries for the 125,000 plus troops, is money that will never be spent on education, on healthcare, on the reconstruction of crumbling public housing, or to train and place the millions of workers who have lost manufacturing jobs in the past three years alone.

The war in Iraq is in reality a war against the nations’ workers and the poor, who are getting less and less, while the big defense industries are making a killing - literally.

What’s next? Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela? We’ve already seen the corporate media play megaphone to the White House, to build and promote a war based on lies.

War is utilized by the imperialists first and foremost, to crush internal enemies. We’re seeing the truth of this insight when we see the sad state of American education; the rush of seniors to buy affordable medications from the Canadians because American drugs are just too expensive; the threat of privatization of Social Security; and the wave of repression that comes with an increasing militarized Police.

This is a war on all of us. And the struggle against war is really a struggle for a better life for the millions of folks who are in need here in this country. To fight against the war is really to fight for your own interests, not the false interests of the defense Industry or the corporate media or the White House.

Down with wars for empire.

We must stop the empire. All empires. This is our work in these times. And it won’t be easy. Join me in coming weeks to discuss how this can be done.

This is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts.

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

Justin McAffee, author of the indispensable newsletter Collapse Curriculum, has been a friend of mine for nearly a decade now. We met on a prayer run in eastern Nevada in 2018, and since then our paths have spiraled closer. We now live in the same part of western Oregon.

On the afternoon of February 24th, we met for the first in what may become a series of live streams to discuss our recent writing and the political crisis. We talked about the BLM logging plan threatening millions of acres of western Oregon forests, strategies and tactics for fighting back against fascism, eco-sabotage, non-violent movement strategy, and much more.

Other topics we discussed:

* ICE fascism in Minnesota and across the US

* Power, oligarchy, and democracy

* The global war of terror as a driver of American collapse

* Trumpism as an intensification of ongoing processes of empire-building

* Genocide and the markers of fascism

* The contradiction of the climate crisis and the pressure cooker this fuels

* Offensive approaches, and the example of sabotage in World War II

* Domestic policy, the black box of public commenting, the administrative state, and regulations as a tool of inverted totalitarianism

* Power, the wealthy, and the links between Epstein, the CIA, Mossad, Steve Bannon, and rise of the far right

* The internet as driver of social decline

* Revolution in the age of surveillance and social isolation

It was a rich conversation, and we’re just getting started. Thank you Katharine Beckett Winship, Lyle Lewis, Jan Andrew Bloxham, Jeanne Elbe, and many others for tuning into my live video with Justin McAffee! Hopefully the first of many.

Let me know what you think of this new format, since this is my first time exploring the use of live video.

This is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts.

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

The Tongass Rainforest in Southeast Alaska is the last great expanse of temperate old growth forest left in the United States, and it has been partially protected since the “Roadless Rule” halted most logging there in 2001.

Now, the “biggest threat to the west coast rainforest this century” is here: Bill S.2554, which would permanently privatize 115,200 acres, including 80,000 acres of old-growth rainforest, into the hands of privately owned logging corporations — all behind a veil of “justice” for indigenous people. All this is happening at the same time that the roadless rule itself is under threat.

This conversation with Tlingit elder and forest defender Wanda Culp and filmmaker and activist Joshua Wright — who helped launch the Fairy Creek blockade — dives into “indigi-washing,” one of the divide and conquer strategies being used defeat public opposition to the destruction of the land.

Wanda and Joshua have requested your help:

TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION:

Please contact the Natural Resources Committee TODAY to oppose S.2554 and urge them to protect our public lands instead of handing them over for private exploitation! If you are reading this after February 12, please email the Senate regardless, please also reach out to your local congressional representative to tell them that you oppose the bill.

Sample letter: https://tinyurl.com/protectTNF

[email protected]

202-224-3121

Links and Resources

* Background on ANCSA, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971)

Note: This is a cross-post from the organization that I work for, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. We are organizers, lawyers, and revolutionaries who educate and agitate to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth. For more than 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate power, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-governance grounded in ecological balance.

CELDF has its own Substack, which I help produce. It’s called Truth and Reckoning. I cross post some of the material we post there to Biocentric, but not all of it — so please subscribe there as well.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago, sat down for a conversation with my friend Tom Grotewohl. Tom is the founder of Protect the Porkies, a community-based organization founded to oppose a copper mine project planned for the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Tom and I originally connected in the wake of the Protect Thacker Pass campaign when he reached out in support of the work we were doing and seeking advice and alliance for their newly-launching land defense effort.

Our conversation here focuses on the ongoing efforts to oppose the Copperwood Mine, which Tom calls a “toxic waste mine” rather than a copper mine, because it will produce far, far more of the former than the latter. As their campaign website states:

98.55% of all material produced at Copperwood will be waste. For every ton of extracted material, only 30 pounds will be copper and 1,970 pounds will be waste.

If 98.55% of what you make are hats and only 1.45% are shoes, it’s most accurate to call yourself a hat-maker, no matter how much you love or profit from your shoes. And so Copperwood would best be described as a waste mine.

All in all, Copperwood’s waste would comprise 40+ million tons in total, containing mercury, arsenic, cadmium, led, and many other toxins, to be stored forever on downward-sloping topography, in a water-rich environment, in unprecedented proximity to this continent’s largest, cleanest source of surface freshwater.

We explore the motivations behind the campaign, intervention points around securing funding for mining projects, and the environmental impacts of mining. We also dive into the importance of art and culture. Tom and the rest of the team at Protect the Porkies have used community engagement and art to involve and inspire people throughout their campaign.

Note: This is a cross-post from the organization that I work for, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. We are organizers, lawyers, and revolutionaries who educate and agitate to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth. For more than 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate power, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-governance grounded in ecological balance.

CELDF has its own Substack, which I help produce. It’s called Truth and Reckoning. I cross post some of the material we post there to Biocentric, but not all of it — so please subscribe there as well.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

Artwork created by community members to honor and support the protection of the Porcupine Mountains

Chapters

03:00 Introduction to Protect the Porkies

05:50 Tom’s Background and motivation

09:29 Max’s experience with Thacker Pass

13:02 Funding for mining projects

19:35 Environmental impacts and permitting issues

25:45 Government and corporate partnerships

31:28 Lessons from Thacker Pass

36:56 Rights of Nature, including challenges and successes

52:03 Cultural change and community engagement

01:03:41 Strategies for Implementing Rights of Nature

Links and Resources

* Protect the Porkies website

* How to take action on Copperwood

* Protect Thacker Pass website

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

Biocentric focuses on resistance against the industrial destruction of our world because I believe this is the central work of our time. It’s also something that even those who agree with are scared of talking about, which is why, as I wrote about two weeks ago, Biocentric will largely focus on eco-sabotage and associated topics this year.

The new series began earlier this week, when I posted a review of the film Woman at War. I have many more pieces in the works, including articles looking at eco-sabotage via forms of non-violent direct action, the backlash caused by sabotage actions, the radical flank effect and why mainstream environmentalists should support eco-sabotage, a historical breakdowns of sabotage in World War II and in the struggle against apartheid, a discussion of sabotage in the context of deep sea mining, a strategy piece about why sabotage may be the most effective tactic we have, and a couple dozen more.

This is important, and there is a lot to cover.

When discussing these topics, make sure you know security culture:

But, this type of clandestine resistance isn’t something that is possible for everyone to take part in. Many people have obligations or restrictions that might make participation difficult or impossible. And even for those who do engage in these actions, you just can’t do it all the time. There will always be downtime.

The purpose of this video is to challenge those of you taking a break between actions or who are unable to be on the front lines to do something tangible for the land where you live.

In this video, I bring you along as I’m planting two native plants — common camas (camassia quamash), a species in the lily family, and ookow (dichelostemma congesta), a species in the asparagus family — in a meadow where I live which has been degraded by overgrazing. Both are valuable human food sources which were widely cultivated by native people across the region where I live. Both benefit from being dug and harvested, and are native meadow plants and wildflowers which support pollinators and other wildlife.

What have you done for the land you belong to this week?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

Hi everyone,

This is an important one. It’s a pair of interviews I conducted just over a week ago with Elder Bill Jones of the Pacheedaht First Nation and Will O’Connell, who have both been key figures in defending ancient forests being logged as you read these words on Vancouver Island.

This is a cross-post from the organization that I work for, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. That organization can be found at Truth and Reckoning. I cross post some of the material we post there to Biocentric, but not all of it. You don’t want to miss the recent piece about John Brown, shared as Luigi Mangione stands trial, so subscribe there if you want to follow the rights of nature movement and my work in community resistance and resilience.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

In this episode, we speak with Elder Bill Jones of the Pacheedaht First Nation and Will O’Connell on the frontlines of old-growth forest defense

First we’ll hear from Will O’Connell, a 34-year-old science and math teacher who has been on the front lines of these protests and joins us from his car at the protest camp, then from Elder Bill Jones from the Pacheedaht First Nation, two leaders in the forest defense movement currently taking place in Vancouver Island in western Canada.

Elder Bill is 85 years old. For decades, he has welcomed people into the forests to stand with him in defense of the last old-growth trees on his territory. At Fairy Creek, his invitation sparked one of the largest acts of civil resistance in Canadian history. Now, Western Forest Products has filed a civil suit against him, seeking an injunction that would make it illegal for Bill to be on his own land. If this injunction is granted, police will be authorized to arrest and detain those protecting the old growth.

Bill’s grandfather once told him: “Sonny, go out into the forest. That is where you will find the Great Mother. In the forest. It is a place of worship.” Today, that sacred place is under threat as logging companies push to cut what remains.

On the day before we recorded this interview, Monday December 8th, Will had been wrongfully arrested by the RCMP, the Canadian federal police, while on-site in the Walbran, and loggers had been able to pass the blockades and begin logging ancient forests again - towering 2,000 year old western red cedars, ancient firs and hemlocks.

A dozen people or more have been arrested over the past week or so, with more every day. They need support on the front lines, so if you’re near Vancouver Island, please go. And if you’re not, we need you elsewhere.

This conversation explores the ongoing efforts to protect the Walbran Valley’s ancient forests, highlighting the role of community activists, including Elder Bill Jones, and the challenges posed by law enforcement. The discussion delves into the tactics used by forest defenders, the historical context of forest defense movements, and the personal experiences of activists on the front lines. It emphasizes the importance of solidarity and the need for continued action against ecological devastation.

Message from Walbran forest defenders

COME TO CAMP We are currently in Kaxi;ks (the Upper Walbran) Valley, fighting for an end to old growth logging. NEW CAMP: 48.75088, -124.50931

Links and Resources

The YouTube version of this podcast will be shared here shortly.

* Donation link to support the resistance

* Fairy Creek Blockade on Instagram

* ‘Indian Against Indian’: The Walbran Forest Protection Blockade and Truth & Reconciliation as Colonialism Continues ...

* How the Walbran Blockade Echoes Another Famous Stand in the Forest

Topics Covered

Walbran Valley, old growth forests, forest defense, RCMP, direct action, community mobilization, environmental activism, Elder Bill Jones, logging, climate change, anthropology, empire, civilization, food supply, population pressure, extraction, and the preservation of wild places and forests as a source of life for future people.

Takeaways

* The Walbran Valley is home to ancient forests that are under threat from logging.

* Elder Bill Jones plays a crucial role in the movement to protect these forests.

* The RCMP has been using heavy-handed tactics against forest defenders.

* Direct action tactics, such as cantilevers, are being employed to block logging roads.

* Historical forest defense movements have shaped current activism strategies.

* Solidarity among activists is vital for sustaining the movement.

* The legal landscape is complex, with injunctions leading to police action.

* Community mobilization is essential for effective forest defense.

* The fight for the Walbran Valley reflects broader ecological issues.

* Activists are determined to continue their efforts despite challenges.

About the Truth and Reckoning Podcast

In this show, we learn from front-line organizers and communities fighting against environmental destruction. We explore different perspectives and innovative strategies for movement building, the potency and potential of rights of nature, and effective action in defense of our communities. And, we share inspiring stories of people working towards right relationship with the land and each other. The show is hosted by CELDF Community Resistance and Resilience Program Co-Director Max Wilbert.

You can find the show on:

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

* Pocketcasts

* YouTube (video and audio)

* And anywhere else you get your podcasts (click here to find this podcast via your preferred app)

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

Hello everyone,

On a frosty morning earlier this autumn, I wandered through a roadless area in a national forest in Oregon near my home — a place which has been protected for more than two decades by a policy the Trump Administration is now working to dismantle.

Join me on this walk, where I discuss the ongoing repeal of the “roadless rule” and the need for a new forest defense movement to stand between these sacred places and the bulldozers and chainsaws.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

What is the “roadless rule”?

The roadless area conservation policy, commonly known as the “roadless rule,” was established in 2001, and protected almost 60 million acres of national forest in the United States from most logging and road building.

While it’s an imperfect law— it can’t be otherwise, emerging as it does from the colonial legal structure of the United States — it has nonetheless protected places like the forest I show you in this video from chainsaws and bulldozers. And that is worthwhile.

Forest defenders fought for this

The roadless rule didn’t just happen out of the goodness of the Clinton administration’s heart.

It came into being in the wake of the “timber wars” in the Pacific Northwest, a between the late 1980’s and late 1990’s during which thousands of tree sits, logging road blockades, disruptive protests, and rallies took place to defend the last remaining old growth forests in the region from logging. On top of this direct action movement, people conducted extensive public education and ecologically-oriented scientific research, as well as political pressure campaigns.

In other words, people fought like hell to protect the forest, and eventually — despite many losses — they won some significant protections for much of the remaining old growth forest in the region.

Since 2001, various state governments, the logging industry, and several presidential administrations have tried to overturn the roadless rule, especially to facilitate logging of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. But the rule has mostly stood strong — until now.

Now, the Trump Administration is working to destroy the roadless rule completely

On his first day in office, Trump signed an Executive Order aiming to repeal all roadless rule protections in the Tongass National Forest, and on August 27th, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began a process to repeal the roadless rule entirely. Their aim is simple: to maximize logging in previously protected old-growth and mature forests, and thus to make as much profit as possible for the logging industry and its Wall Street financiers.

And unfortunately, this is far from the only thread facing forests on this continent. On vast swaths of privately-owned timberland, plantation “forests” are grown in rapid rotations like GMO corn, subjected to repeated aerial spray of pesticides, sloughing sediment in streams and rivers, and serving as tinderboxes for climate-influenced wildfires.

On top of this, for the last decade we’ve seen a growing bipartisan push to make forests “wildfire resilient” by essentially cutting all the trees down. It’s absolute madness, but somehow even many supposed environmentalists have lost the plot due to justified climate anxiety and a very effective “shock doctrine”-style propaganda campaign from the timber industry and their NGO allies.

It’s time for a new forest defense movement

We’re facing major threats to forests across the United States. With a determinedly fascist and extraction-oriented administration in control of the Federal Government, times are dire. Governors, legislatures, and big environmental groups aren’t going to stop these logging projects — either because they don’t want to, or because they can’t.

In my area, major logging projects on Federal lands are already ramping up. That means it’s time for the resistance to ramp up, too. No one else is coming to save us. If we don’t protect these areas, no one will. It’s time for a revitalized forest defense movement. It’s time for courageous action. It’s time for risk taking. Not just in the forests, but in the desert and on the plains and in the mountains, too. This accelerated wave of destruction must be stopped.

It can be challenging to know where to get started. I often get asked, “what can I do as just one person?”

The answer is, don’t be just one person. Do this instead.

I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

Recently I found myself taking a misty walk at dawn along the Columbia River (Wimahl in Chinook, Nchʼi-Wàna in Yakama), the second largest river in the contiguous United States — and one of the most industrialized rivers in the world.

Join me on this walk, where I discuss the ecological problems facing the Columbia — headlined by the dams. Guest appearances from the endangered Columbian white-tailed deer, beavers, and river otters.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

The Columbia River is no longer a free-flowing river. Dammed at fourteen places along the mainstem, there are more than 225 major dams in the watershed in total. Much of the river is essentially now a series of reservoirs.

Cheap and plentiful electricity from the dams powers chemical production, metal smelting and alloying, manufacturing, and, increasingly, data centers up and down the river. Barging made possible by the dams makes the river a highway for extractive industries: timber, grain, fossil fuels, and more. At a nuclear site in Washington State known as Hanford, more than 1 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste — and counting — has leaked out of old underground storage tanks and is slowly filtering through the soil into the river.

A barge moves logs up the Columbia River. Video by the author.

In the area where I filmed this video, the endangered Columbian white-tailed deer is hanging on to scraps of habitat, but is threatened mainly by habitat destruction and fragmentation from development (rural housing, urban sprawl, roads, highways, rail, industrial projects, and so on).

I conclude the video by talking about life as a process flowing with complexity greater than we can understand. It’s not enough to preserve a remnant of a remnant, which is all that the inadequate Endangered Species Act, which is currently under assault, manages to do. Whenever biodiversity and abundance and resilience is lost, the web of life is impoverished. This progressive impoverishment is the main problem the planet faces today.

A recent paper published in Nature, as shared by my friend Justin McAffee over at Collapse Curriculum, reaches a similar conclusion: “land-use change [read: habitat destruction, degradation, and fragmentation] may have major undetected impacts on the resilience of key ecological functions, hindering the capacity of natural ecosystems to absorb further reductions in functionality caused by ongoing perturbations.”

In other words, degraded landscapes can show a false resilience, like a person who has suffered a major injury or malady and is in state called “compensatory shock.” These people may appear almost healthy until their blood pressure collapses and they fall into a rapid spiral towards death. Similarly, degraded ecosystems are living on borrowed time. Their health is fundamentally compromised.

The Columbia River is a prime example of shifting baseline syndrome. The last of those who remember the river before the big dams were built are dying now. And with them die the memories, now becoming myth, of salmon and sturgeon and lampreys in their millions. But what humans have made, we can unmake.

The dams must fall, and the river must be freed.

I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe

Hi everyone,

In this video, I talk about the rise of AI slop and the weaponization of AI to “flood the zone with s**t” (to quote Steve Bannon), about resistance to the rapid metastasizing of data centers around the world, about the rise of a new luddism as a revolutionary sentiment, and about a piece written by my friend Cris titled “The War on Truth.” In it, Cris writes:

The rise of social media created a double-edged sword. On one side, it offered an open space for people to express themselves, form communities, and access information outside of mainstream channels. On the other, it enabled the widespread proliferation of fake news, disinformation, and algorithm-driven echo chambers—tools that have become vital to the resurgence of authoritarianism and fascism across the globe, including in the USA, the Philippines, Brazil, and beyond.

Access to information is still a privilege, not a right. Even in the age of “free” information, structural inequalities continue to determine who gets to speak and who gets heard. Historically, traditional media—newspapers, magazines, radio, and television—was tightly controlled by elites. Today, while digital platforms appear decentralized, they are still subject to corporate and political manipulation. According to doctrines like Unrestricted Warfare, media becomes a weapon: not just for communication, but for disinformation, confusion, and the erosion of public trust. The battle of propaganda still happening in a new battlefield and a war on narrative are ongoing.

I recommend reading the full piece.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

I’ve left social media to focus my attention on organizing and writing. That means I rely entirely on readers like you to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxwilbert.substack.com/subscribe