Sadly Craig Lorentson died last year, a great singer & lyricist. This is one of my favourite songs.

Containing the rhyme- Charlton Heston put his vest on.

From the BBC Prison Study 2002 run by Alex Haslam & Steve Reicher a new experiment moving on from the Stanford Prison Experiment-

As soon as the siren sounds, the Guards take the Prisoners from their cells and line them up against the Atrium walls. An experimenter’s voice is heard over the intercom:

Prisoners, pay attention. This is a message from the experimenters. You have been selected as a Prisoner. If you display the qualities required of Guards, you may be promoted. We will be observing your behaviour, as will the Guards, over the next two days. We have made provision for a promotion and an announcement will be made on Day 3…

Our reasoning, based on social identity theory, was that where the disadvantaged think that they can advance to a higher-status position through their individual efforts, they will fail to act as a group. That is, they will work individually within the system rather than work together against the system. There will be no collective resistance. And that is what we found.

Via David Malone/Golem XIV, part of the Reuters graphics package of debt info-apocalypse.

Below from Ann Pettifor a wee comparison of Greece to the historic (& sensible) Argentinian default, which puts Greece in straight comparison maybe at a few months to default but given the context in the Eurozone that will be much, much sooner. All that is happening now is simply indebting us more to save fatally wounded banks, kind of the elite (be it in government offices or corporate offices) stealing everything in site before the fire they started consumes the joint. We never solved any ‘crsis’ we just let the looters carry on since August 2007 (foreseen by some but censored from the media, see Danny Schechter at Nieman Foundation for journalism at Harvard) and seeing how easy that was the crooks figured they can pull off a blame game on us too, and it looks like enough people fell for that, well done chumps (including those fine colour coded pimps of neoliberalism fighting it out within Labour with their Stalinesque rewriting of history and bait & switch scams).

So as entertaining as Berlusconi’s latter day Caligula meets Salo shenanigans are it’s a big problem as either Italy or more likely Greece are going to exlode and the firefighters are the same people who set the fire in the first place. So unless we chuck out our quisling governments, guess who’s going to foot the bill again, and again, and again? There Is An Alternative, global debt jubilee. Or instead G8 countries can enact debt peonage and have dubious Christian charities (who partner with arms makers) feed their unwanted surplus labour. Hey, guess what aristocrat George Osborne will choose? Go on, take a punt, there may be a slight clue in ‘aristocrat’. Responding to this would not be class war, it would self defence class.

For the 4 Welsh miners found dead today.

Via Mostly Forbidden Zone

Thanks to all who lent support, one foot in front of the other…

You may be relieved to know that -at the moment- writing about my distaste for existing does not alleviate the discomfort, therefore go elsewhere for overly lengthy look-at-me tortured soul pornography. However, for the not so lengthy-

Death of thousand cuts
So there is that frustrating internet thing and the one concerning how my health and welfare is treated by the government and its attendant corporate familiars, pertaining to that-

Depression makes you a secret agent whose mission is self-termination, you may well appear normal for brief periods of social engagement, this is not rocket science. Various people and ideologies tell you that self-termination under such circumstances is a disorder, a disease and is therefore not rational, loved ones etc will also add to this chorus and tell you not to do yourself in. So you give it a whirl, take their word for it even if you think otherwise. This however becomes difficult to maintain when stressors increase and other ideologies and social pressure indicate to you that you are economically worthless, and that is all the worth that resides in a human being, the ability to produce surplus capital. Worse still you are a drain on resources and that your death would be a preferable outcome. So the scorecard goes-

• Loved ones- don’t do it.
• Yourself- I think about doing it quite a lot.
• Government, media, for profit health & welfare services- you are a useless eater, die.

Which comes to two thirds in favour quite often. Currently the excessive stressor is caused by an Atos assessment that has been hovering over my head all sword of Damocles-y since the 14th of June and is ongoing.

Getting all two thirdsy most days.

There are but three solutions to any or all of these-

1. Be fabulously well to do and with independent wealth at least remove most of the day to day stressors that assault you thus creating space for more profound recovery.
2. Self termination.
3. Cope.

Only 2 & 3 appear to be reasonably possible with 3 being contingent on many outside factors apparently beyond my control. Ain’t life exciting?

So the personal is political. While some will jolly along to their utopia of every activity done for profit let’s pretend for just a moment they have a conscience and that conscience might give them a troubling twinge if they realise their elite wealth is made from killing people or causing the situation some people live in to become so unbearable they do the deed for them.

Actually I expect they conclude from that an absolute sense of blamelessness, so nevermind the twinge.