Crisis on Planet Gloxx!

George Osborne Declares War on the Working Class

EXTRACT: "In fact the Budget was driven far more by a political agenda than an economic one. Clearly, the coalition government - and those it represents - sees a golden opportunity to roll back the welfare state and tilt the balance of class forces in favour of capital, the ‘deficit crisis’ making a perfect excuse for such an offensive. Hence, except for some paltry concessions here and there to those sections of the working class deemed to be the ‘worthy poor’, what we are confronted with is a naked attempt to shift the deficit burden onto the backs of the working class by ruthlessly driving down living standards. Work longer for less, retire later and poorer - if you have a job at all, of course, as it is an absolute certainty that unemployment will sharply shoot up as a direct consequence of the approach outlined by Osborne."
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Richard Thompson - "Shoot out The Lights" (Live 1985)

Facebook is Dead! Long Live ... Diaspora?

More details here and here.

Radial Tree of Life

My Official Portrait

Me Relaxing After a Hard Day Saving Humanity's Ass

Dead Sea Muse

Almost Human

Obama the Far Left Radical

Mountains to Climb

Invisible Hand of the Free Market

"Labyrinth" (Leonora Carrington, 1991)

Fighting for the Planet

EXTRACT: "Deepwater Horizon has shown the true nature of capitalism. Accumulate, accumulate - the alpha and omega of capitalism. The need to constantly expand “chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe”, wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. Nowadays, the same need sends it drilling a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico, when that very same substance is virtually oozing out of the ground in countries like Saudi Arabia - a profit can be made, so damn the consequences: environmental and  human. Irrationality reigns.
Due to this logic - from which its personifications can never escape - capitalism can never preserve the environment in the long term. It is pre-programmed to inflict ecological degradation. No matter how incredible the scientific advances under capitalism, whatever ‘green’ technology it might develop and deploy, we will still see the same monstrous waste of resources. The same assault on planet Earth and despoliation of nature. Indeed, paradoxically, technological innovation - ‘green’ or otherwise - under capitalism can actually lead to an increase in pollution and general environmental destruction. This paradox - named after a 19th century contemporary of Marx, William Stanley Jevons - lies at the very heart of capitalism."
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"Oil on Canvas" (Leonora Carrington, 1960)

Bird in Hand

BP Necktie

Ship of Fools

The Howl

Angel of the North

The Best of the Confessions

Welcome to Biblewood

Son of God Draws the Line

Burning Up Planet Earth

EXTRACT: "BP and the Gulf disaster offers us a perfect snapshot of the irrational and contradictory nature of actually existing capitalism. So we have the awesome and marvellous - if not near miraculous - technology needed to extract oil thousands of feet under the ocean. Something, just like the moon landings, that gives us a flavour of human potential - of what is possible. On the other hand, all this science and technology is used to extract a relatively rare resource, oil, and then ... burn it in car engines, power stations, etc. Last year the world consumed 3,882 million tonnes of oil and has proven reserves of some 181 thousand million tonnes. Such squandering of this non-renewable energy source not only allows people to move from A to B and to keep the lights on. Its use is bound up with capitalism’s need for constant self-expansion for the sake of self-expansion. In other words, the creative and transformative power of science and technology is deployed in the destructive service of capital."

The Wankiest Generation

Use Your Brains Before it is Too Late

Does My Face Look Big In This?

One of Those Days

Armageddon Comics

Arriving on Time

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Jesus's Lunar Escapades

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Twenty-First Century Schizoid Guitar

Heaven is Like This

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Victims of British Justice

EXTRACT: "Britain locks up many more children and young people than any other country in western Europe. The statistics for 2008-09 reveal that 64,803 youngsters were given “community remands” and that 6,556 were sent to local authority “accommodation” - effectively imprisoned - or were in actual custody. Which is to say that four times as many young people are imprisoned in the UK than in France, which has a similar population - in fact, as a proportion of the population Britain bangs up more than 14 times as many youngsters as Belgium or 20 times more than the Netherlands.
More precisely still with regards the UK statistics, 765 children aged 14 were imprisoned - with 10 and 11-year-olds being convicted or given reprimands (or final warnings) for 6,000 assorted offences. Over 70% of these were entirely non-violent in nature, while 66 of them were classified as “sex offences”. Of course, in England and Wales the age of criminal responsibility is 10, while in Scotland it is only eight. Quite obscenely, this makes the UK the worst offender for inflicting retributive punishment upon its youngsters in all of Europe - indeed, most of the world. Only countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Sudan and Myanmar/Burma have a worse record. Or, to put it another way, Turkey, Korea, Morocco, Uganda, Algeria, Uzbekistan, China, the Russian Federation, Egypt, etc have a relatively more enlightened position on this particular issue and set a higher age of criminal responsibility."
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Son of God Meets Zimmerman

That's the Way to Do It