2025 Summer Reading
Newspapers - which used to function as democracy's independent watchdogs - have been compromised or shut down. Mass information technology has been appropriated by profiteers [Facebook (Zuckerman), X (Musk), Fox News (Murdoch), and The Washington Post (Bezos)]. Their algorithms ignore reporters who speak the truth about empire, inequality, or genocide (including the generational genocide of climate annihilation) and demonize whistleblowers who report the conflicts of interest and crimes of government officials.
Alternative forms of media for writers, publishers, bloggers, and creators have become available, including web-based blogs and email newsletters like Substack, Medium, and Ghost.
Parallel Polis 2030’s Summer 2025 recommendations are below.
Prison Notebook (by Roger Hallam)
https://rogerhallam.substack.com/
Roger Hallam was a founder of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, and Just Stop Oil. He has facilitated the creation of significant climate campaigns in the UK, Italy, Germany, and Sweden. In 2023, the New Statesman rated him as the 34th most influential progressive person in the UK—the highest position of any environmentalist apart from David Attenborough. In 2024, a British judge had Roger dragged out of court by police for refusing to break his oath to tell the "whole truth" to the jury in a climate protest trial. Shortly thereafter he was given a five-year prison sentence—the longest sentence for civil disobedience in the UK since the Second World War. Roger continues to work from his prison cell.
Recent Blogs include: My Top 10 Reads from Prison; Why the Human Race is Going Extinct in this Century; Just Stop Oil Didn’t Fail – The Liberal Class Did; and My Interview with the New Yorker.
The Chris Hedges Report
https://chrishedges.substack.com/
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, graduated from the Harvard Divinity School and worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio, and other news organizations in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans. He was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of global terrorism. He is a fellow at the Nation Institute and the author of numerous books, including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, and was the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact.
Recent Blogs include: Trumps Useful Idiots; Palestine Post, A Genocide Foretold; The New Dark Age; and Trumpland.
Biocentric with Max Wilbert
https://maxwilbert.substack.com/
Max Wilbert has worked for more than two decades to save the Earth on projects in the Siberian Arctic, fossil fuel blockades in Canada and the United States, solidarity work with environmentalists in the Philippines, and in a front-line direct action at Thacker Pass. In addition to periods of confrontation, direct action, and travel, his work involves organizing, education, strategizing, writing, photography, video production, and podcasting. Max is also a co-author of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It
Recent Blogs include: Alternative Cultures are Beautiful and Important. They’re Also Not Enough; Dehydration of a Landscape; Building a Mycelial Network of Resistance and Resilience; and Are We Doomed?
The George Tsakraklides View
George Tsakraklides is an author, blogger, poet, and scientist who trained in molecular biology, chemistry, food science, and Earth sciences. After working in data analytics and marketing sciences and experiencing the profit-driven and exploitative forces in human society, he realized his core concerns were ecology and humanity’s broken relationship with nature. He has written fiction, non-fiction, and poetry around the theme of civilizational collapse and humanity’s inevitable self-destruction. George emphasizes that: “We are not approaching a collapse. We are experiencing the symptoms of a collapse that has already happened long ago” His latest book, Franken Politics, has now been published.
Recent blogs include: The Happiness Trap; Labored to Extinction; Technophilia; and Finding Meaning in an Increasingly Absurd World.
Collapse 2050 (by Sarah Connor)
Sarah Connor is an alias. She created a diverse and interesting site that is a safe place for the collapse aware to learn, share, discuss, debate, prepare and grieve.
Recent blogs include: Collapse: A Timeline (What to expect decade-by-decade); 2030 Doomsday Scenario: The Great Nuclear Collapse; Pollinator and Civilization Collapse; and Energy Resources and Our Future.
The Honest Sorcerer
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/
https://medium.com/@thehonestsorcerer
The Honest Sorcerer is a critic of modern times - offering ideas for contemplation about our predicament, including issues such as the systemic nature of energy and the mechanism through which energy production might unravel.
Recent Blogs include: The Two Achilles Heels of Complex Systems; Power Down: A Scenario; Living with Collapse; and Bye-Bye Saudi America.