Depression is a natural response to Capitalist Madness

Depression is a natural response to Capitalist Madness

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
July 13 2026

You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel depressed at times. We’re living through a period of capitalist decay, a social system that has reached the limits of what it can offer ordinary people. Much of this depression comes from a familiar feeling — the sense that we can’t influence events, that history is happening to us rather than with us. The Institute for Labor and Mental Health once called this surplus powerlessness, and the term still fits.

Part of the problem is that there’s no national organization with real social power to turn to, no broad network of militant groups like those that existed in the 1930s. It’s easy to feel isolated in the absence of visible leadership or mass movements.

But that doesn’t mean we’re incapable of acting. We can start small: talking with friends, co-workers, and neighbors; studying the rich traditions of working‑class history; learning how past generations fought racism, sexism, and division to build unity. Despite the history of racism and sexism injected in to society by the ruling class in order to undermine workers’ unity, the U.S. labor movement has a deep well of experience, and it’s ours to draw from.

We can also use the organizations we do have. Our unions can become vehicles for change. If we are in a union we can build rank and file caucuses and adopt fighting programs that demand what workers actually need —not what the Democratic Party or its allies atop organized labor deem is acceptable. 

The strategies that built the CIO and industrial unionism in the 1930s weren’t magic; they were practical, collective, and rooted in workers’ own initiative and power.

The antidote to political depression begins with accepting that the world we live in can be changed. History shows that systems end and new ones are built. Acting consciously at whatever level our resources allow is how we break the isolation and helplessness that capitalism produces.

And we should be clear, mass movements aren’t created by charismatic individuals or tiny groups claiming to have all the answers; a healthy democratic mass movement cannot be manufactured. They emerge because the capitalist class is compelled to attack workers, and workers respond. That dynamic hasn’t disappeared.

I have no doubt that the working class will rise to meet the challenges ahead. There are no guarantees — there never have been — but we are very much alive, and history is still ours to shape.

Workers of all countries unite.

Epstein Was a Network, Not an Island . (In the Sea of Capitalism)

 

Richard Mellor

I really enjoy Bruce Fanger’s writing, especially in the way he captures the strange, disorienting processes unfolding around us. Yet what stands out just as much is what he doesn’t say. He never names capitalism, never touches on the underlying system of production that shapes the very events he’s describing. His commentary is an attempt to explain our moment as we live through it, but it stops short of identifying the structural engine driving these crises. This is all too common with opponents of the present state of affairs in the US and internationally.

I’m not sure whether this omission is intentional. Perhaps Bruce sees these developments as failures of human nature — a common explanation these days — rather than as the predictable outcomes of a particular economic and social order. I am not in the slightest questioning his integrity. But if we’re honest about what we’re experiencing, we have to recognize that this is not simply a moral or psychological breakdown; the product of personality flaws. It is the late stage of a social system in decay, to borrow the words of a well‑known Russian revolutionary.

 

And if that’s true, then the path forward is not nostalgia, not moral renewal, not minor reform and certainly not more organised religion. And I am not saying Bruce is recommending any of these as I have not spoken with him about his political views. But my view is that what will resolve these crises is systemic change. Without it, we risk losing far more than we realize. Richard Mellor FFWP Admin.

 

Epstein Was a Network, Not an Island

Bruce Fanger

White Rose June 19, 2026

 

How Peter Thiel, tech oligarchy, and elite access turned private rooms into power

 

The mistake is thinking Jeffrey Epstein was only an island.

 

The island matters. The mansion matters. The planes matter. The victims matter most of all. Nothing should blur that. But if we stop at the island, we miss the machinery that made Epstein useful to powerful people long after any decent society should have shut every door in his face.

 

Epstein was not merely a predator hiding among elites. He was an access broker moving among them.

 

That distinction matters because the network changed over time.

 

Donald Trump belonged mostly to Epstein’s earlier world: Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, New York money, beauty-pageant culture, models, celebrity real estate, and rich men orbiting one another in rooms where money mistook itself for innocence. That connection was public enough that Trump once praised Epstein as a “terrific guy” and acknowledged his taste for younger women. The later explanations about when the relationship ended and why it ended have shifted, which carries its own distinct odor.

 

But Trump’s Epstein connection does not appear to be the same play as the later tech-oligarch layer. That is the important distinction. Trump was the gaudy old-world layer: gold trim, private clubs, social access, rich-man sleaze in Palm Beach lighting.

 

The tech oligarchs show up in a different phase of Epstein’s usefulness.

After Epstein’s 2008 conviction, any normal person would have treated him as radioactive. Instead, parts of the elite world treated him like a damaged but still functioning connector. He moved through finance, science, academia, philanthropy, technology, and political influence. The point was not simply sex or scandal.

 

The point was access.

 

That is where Peter Thiel becomes the more serious figure.

 

Elon Musk belongs in this story, but not at the center of it. Musk is spectacle: rockets, social media, political noise, government contracts, artificial intelligence, Starlink, Trump-world proximity, and the constant toddler-with-a-flamethrower performance. His documented Epstein references deserve scrutiny, especially because Epstein appears to have tried to cultivate him. But Musk is not the foundation of this argument.

 

Musk is the flare in the sky.

 

Thiel is the architecture underneath.

 

Peter Thiel sits at the intersection of venture capital, surveillance technology, defense contracting, right-wing political engineering, elite secrecy, and the fantasy of escape. PayPal made the network. Palantir made the surveillance state profitable. Founders Fund helped seed the future these men now claim only they are qualified to govern. Thiel’s support for figures like JD Vance shows the movement from influence to installation. That is not just donating to politics.

 

That is building political hardware.

 

The Epstein-Thiel connection is not merely social fog. Reporting has tied Epstein to planned meetings, correspondence, and investment in Thiel-linked Valar Ventures funds. That does not prove participation in Epstein’s crimes. It does not need to. The significance is not that every person near Epstein was criminal. The significance is that Epstein still had access to powerful men after his conviction, and some of those men were helping build the machinery of the future.

 

Then there is Dialog, the private invitation-only network co-founded by Thiel and recently exposed through leaked reporting.

 

Dialog is not alarming simply because powerful people meet privately. That is old news. Elites have always preferred rooms without the public in them. The concerning part is the particular mixture: tech capital, political figures, finance, media, academia, artificial intelligence, defense-adjacent interests, surveillance power, and off-the-record secrecy at a time when these industries are moving deeper into the machinery of government.

 

That is the new ruling-class style.

 

Not smoke-filled rooms. Clean rooms.

 

Not mob bosses. Platform owners.

 

Not only oil men. Data men.

 

The people who want to manage the future meet away from the people who have to live in it.

 

This is why Epstein’s later tech connections matter even if they do not prove criminal wrongdoing by everyone named in his records. The careful distinction must be made: appearing in Epstein’s schedules or documents does not prove participation in Epstein’s crimes. Planned meetings do not prove meetings happened. Mention does not equal guilt.

 

But the pattern still matters.

 

Epstein’s genius, if one can use that word for something so diseased, was understanding that access itself is power. A billionaire does not need every person in the room to be criminal. He needs them flattered by invitation, softened by convenience, protected by status, and trained to believe that normal rules do not apply in private spaces.

 

That is why the timeline matters.

 

Trump represents Epstein’s earlier social-access world. Thiel represents the later tech-finance-power world. They do not need to be one continuous crew from the beginning. In fact, the distinction makes the story sharper. Epstein adapted. First came Palm Beach sleaze. Later came futurist power. First came clubs and models. Later came tech capital, science prestige, venture money, AI, rockets, surveillance, and private governance.

 

Trump was old-money sleaze with gold trim.

 

Musk is future-money spectacle with rockets and a propaganda platform.

 

Thiel is the server room.

 

Thiel’s New Zealand story exposes the psychology of this class. His proposed Wānaka compound was described as a luxury lodge, not officially an apocalypse bunker, and that distinction matters. But symbolism has a way of telling the truth before the press release catches up. Remote land. Earth-sheltered design. Elite refuge. A private sanctuary at the edge of the world.

 

It was not proof of an end-times plot.

 

It was evidence of an instinct.

 

The same men who sell disruption to the public often buy isolation for themselves. They preach the future while reserving escape routes from it. They tell ordinary people to adapt, compete, retrain, sacrifice, endure, and trust the market. Then they purchase distance from the consequences of the world they help create.

 

Epstein’s island was a private room surrounded by water.

 

The tech oligarch’s refuge is a private room surrounded by collapse.

 

That is the tell.

 

Oil barons threaten humanity by burning the physical world while funding delay, denial, and dependence. Tech oligarchs threaten humanity by building the control systems for the damaged world that follows: surveillance platforms, AI decision systems, border enforcement tools, privatized intelligence, social-media propaganda, military logistics, and political candidate pipelines.

 

The oil baron says the house can keep burning.

 

The tech oligarch says he can manage the ashes.

 

Humanity should reject both.

 

Epstein sits in this story not as the only villain, but as a window. He showed how the ruling class actually moves when no one is watching closely: private planes, private islands, private meetings, private money, private introductions, private reputational laundering, and public denial once the lights come on.

 

The scandal is not that one monster fooled polite society.

 

The scandal is that polite society kept answering his calls.

 

That is why the Thiel focus matters. Trump’s Epstein connection is ugly and real, but it belongs largely to the earlier social world. Musk deserves scrutiny, but in this story he is not the foundation. Thiel gives us the architecture: surveillance, capital, politics, secrecy, elite forums, and escape.

 

Epstein was not an anomaly.

 

He was a method.

 

He was a private operating system for elite access, and the tech oligarchs did not invent that system.

 

They upgraded it.

 

The old oligarchs wanted the oil.

 

The new oligarchs want the operating system of society.

 

Epstein opened doors.

 

Thiel builds rooms without windows.

 

That is the real threat.

Not Using Self Check at Safeway is a Political Act.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

We are all busy. Life is stressful. But we can resist in so many small ways. Don't use self checkout, you can't be in that much of a hurry. And talk to other folks in line. 

Remind them that you don't work here. Remind them that the jobs here are union jobs with benefits, important in the US with no health care and poor public services. Tell them that if we all do this there will be no jobs left for our children and grandchildren. 

And most of us are just working folk, we won't be pop stars, (most musicians won't be either, they'll make good music) basketball stars, or move about in the company of the Bill Gates, Onan Musk's and Mark Zuckerberg's of this world. We should carry our identity as workers proudly as society functions because of us.

Fight back against their war in the workplace and their ideological war aiming to convince us, against our best instincts, that the free market is efficient and works for all of us. Fight back any way you can.

 

When we take these small steps, in other words, not passively go about our daily lives as if we have no power, it changes our immediate environment. It creates discussion. Even if we accomplish very little in the short term, in the long term we make headway. We talk to one another, we question technology, the technology that in the long run makes us redundant and those that it does not make redundant it increases their pace of work and the rate of exploitation. 

We inevitably think about the real problem and that it is not technology but the class that owns it. 

Most of us are not happy with the way things are. But we are isolated, distracted by the mass media, the obsession with sports, sex, religion and so on. I should add, I like the first two, but obsession with anything is not healthy. 

The media is owned by the same group of people that own the supermarkets and big stores, the airlines, the building of homes that, in essence is human shelter. They own the means of producing our food and they own the water needed to produce it. Yet they are not in the business of food production. Marx explained it so well:

“A schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.” 

This class of people spends billions of dollars trying to convince us that our basic instincts about the world are wrong. It is this that makes us sick, depressed. Fighting back changes this as confronting the school bully does, even if he wins on that day he will find a different victim. Rejecting the narrative has the same effect.

 

I'll share these statistics below once more. They are from rom a year or two ago. We are not what the billionaire's media says we are. We know what we want but do not know how we can get it or that we can get it at all. That is a huge dam that will be breached at some point, the idea that we can't change things. We will see some huge battles ahead I am convinced of it.

 

Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed.”  Gallup

 

According to a Gallup survey…… 62 percent of Americans now say that the federal government should ensure that all Americans have health coverage, Dec 2024

 

 Nearly four times as many voters

support increasing public transportation funding as support reducing it. 

70 percent of respondents agree that “providing people with more transportation options is better for our health, safety, and economy than building more highways.” 

 

We know what we need.

The Efforts the US Mass Media Goes to in Order to Deny There is Such a Thing as a US Working Class.

Richard Mellor

I received a message from someone who had just seen this on my You Tube channel and liked it. I can't remember if I posted it to the blog here and couldn't find it. So I thought I'd repost it as it is about the class question that is so often obscured or outright hidden in US society. The obsession with identity politics is one of the methods used to avoid promoting the class issue in the US. They have done a good job of it, the mass media has convinced millions of Americans that they are middle class and this term is used to describe workers in the media. The serious journals of capitalism like the WSJ or Business Week use it though, they know that most working people never read them. 

The Closing Word: On Merit, Class, and the Myth of the Level Playing Field

Richard Mellor

Note:

The video above from The Officer Tatum channel, attempts to defend Charlie Kirk against accusations of racism, featuring Kirk arguing to a young man at the microphone that all human beings — regardless of race — share the same DNA. Tatum himself, believed to be the son of former Oakland Raider Art Tatum, likely comes from a position of relative privilege and, like many in his social circle, appears motivated by a desire to advance his standing within the existing capitalist hierarchy.

 

Tatum is also connected to Angel Studios, a religiously-driven media company with Mormon roots and a global reach, spreading content that promotes both faith and the virtues of capitalism and the free market. Kirk, meanwhile, was bankrolled by billionaires long championed the tired "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" myth.

 

I made a video about this on  You Tube and Kirk’s defenders responded. My response to them is the following. 

 

The Closing Word: On Merit, Class, and the Myth of the Level Playing Field

A response to criticisms to a video I made saying Charlie Kirk was a racist. His line “Did You Earn It?”mentioned in this video is a profoundly racist comment and if you don’t understand that, I really urge you to re-think it and discuss with people why you’re wrong; if you are genuine, you’ll see why it’s wrong. If you’re not, be open about your racist views and defend them so we can see who you are. 

I stress I am not a white liberal. I do not feel guilty because people that were the same color as me or the same nationality treated others as lesser beings. We are not responsible for the acts of ancestors or relatives from the past. We are obligated to learn from history, recognize that we don’t all have the same history as we stress in the best way we can that working class people have the same general oppression in society and that we all have the same enemy.

To those claiming that systemic racism is a thing of the past—or, more absurdly, that the "real" racism is now directed at white people—let’s get one thing straight:

When you argue that job opportunities should be about "merit" and "the best person for the job," you aren't saying anything new. It sounds fair on paper, but in practice, it’s a tired shield used to protect a status quo built on theft. We live in a capitalist, class-based society designed to exploit. While all workers are exploited, history shows us that some are targeted with "extra" layers of oppression—whether it’s Catholics in Northern Ireland, Muslims in India, or Black people in America and at all times women.

1. The Myth of "DNA Equality"

People like Charlie Kirk love to cite DNA to claim "we’re all the same." It’s an oft repeated claim. Society doesn’t interact with your double helix; it interacts with your class position, your skin color, your zip code, and your access to generational wealth. To use biology to deny the reality of social and economic exclusion doesn't fool anyone—least of all the people who have to live through that exclusion every day.

2. Two Centuries of Affirmative Action

It is a massive insult to preach "meritocracy" to people who were legally excluded from the very institutions that build "merit" (schools, home loans, stable jobs) for centuries. Let’s be honest: White workers in this country have benefited from a couple hundred years of their own version of affirmative action. To oppose efforts to rectify that history now by claiming you "only see qualifications" is, frankly, a joke.

3. The "Buffer Class" Strategy

I’ll be the first to admit that the ruling class will never teach history, that includes racism and why it exists, in a way that actually unites us. They don't want white workers and Black workers realizing they share an enemy. Instead, after the heroic Civil Rights movement forced the state’s hand, the system made just enough concessions to build a Black middle class—a "buffer layer" to stabilize the system and make it look like the "American Dream" was finally open for business.

The Bottom Line

Class oppression is real, and white workers are victims of it in a million ways. But Black workers face that plus the weight of a racial caste system. This isn't rocket science; it's history. If you want to talk about "merit," first you have to account for a head start that lasted three hundred years. Until then, your "color blindness" is nothing more than a blindfold.

Israel Today, Like American Slavery in The South, is an Entire Nation Gone Mad.

Richard Mellor

I recall in my youth reading about the Roman games and that for entertainment they would have bulls ra*e women. I found that hard to believe. How is that possible? I am not going to describe how as what I read then described it. It still seemed so horrible and bizarre that I didn't really believe it. But here it comes up again. 

The former IOF guy in the interview here is pretty convincing and he also talks about how Palestinians are hated by most Israeli's but after October the 7th, it's beyond hatred but a psychosis. That’s why we hear them say that all Palestinian children are the enemy and should be killed; they are not seen as human. The English bourgeois referred to the Irish as the “savage Race” and as “white Chimpanzees”. 

This speaks to what human nature is and what it isn't. People will argue that humans are naturally greedy and individualistic, but this is simply not the case if we look at history. What we can become is dependent in the main on the conditions in which we live and the wider society.

 

Human beings have the ability to show great kindness, compassion and heroic sacrifice in defence of others or the weak and underrepresented; but we also have the capacity to be horrible, unkind and outright brutal. Human nature is not a static thing, and history shows that the latter example is the most prominent and a powerful tendency in us. Capitalism is an individualistic, selfish, dog eat dog system, it is very powerful and naturally influences how we live, think and behave. It makes us sick because it goes against our best instincts.

 

I remember a global study that asked women what they wanted (I think it was just women) most in a partner and the overwhelming response was solidarity. So, despite the massive amount of propaganda telling us what look is important, how one dresses, what one does for a living, or if they smoke the right cigarettes------as the Rolling Stone’s song goes, and “none” would be the more common answer today-----, they chose solidarity. Isn’t love really solidarity? Someone who empathizes, understands and sacrifices for the benefit of the unity of the whole. One who accepts that their own existence is tied to others.

 

There is such a thing as mass psychosis surely. In Na*i Germany, there was a huge percentage of German’s who agreed with the Na*i’s views about Jews. Folks, especially white brothers and sisters might want to read about Mary Turner whose husband along with 11 other black men had been lynched in retaliation for the killing of a white farmer. Mary denied her husband had been involved and threatened to sue the ring leaders and her own life was threatened so she fled. But they caught up with her. Her is a clip from John Jeter’s book; Class War in America—Are You a Worker or are You White

 

Order Class War:  Are You a Worker or are you White by Jon Jeter Here

It hard to imagine that people could behave this way. It’s not natural to us, it’s starts in society as a whole and serves the interests of the powerful.

 

This was not an isolated event. It took place in a society that birthed it, that encouraged it and that required it. The society could not function unless it demonized a whole section of the population, and native Americans suffered the same fate, just like the Zionists have done to the Palestinians. Malcolm X was correct when said that, “you can’t have capitalism without racism”.

 

The Palestinians stand in the way of an ethno-centric ruling class and its aims; they have to be othered. In order to colonize a people you have to demonize them to win support from your own working class without whose help, the elimination of the “vermin” would not be possible.

The pro-Zionist mass media always asks the question: Do you think Israel has a right to exist? It already exists of course, so it's a trick question. We would not say today that the US system of slavery in the south has a right to exist today. The majority of the people on the planet accept that the German state under Na*zi rule had no right to exist and indeed destroyed it. Israel, accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing of an entire population by most of the world's authorities on this matter, does not have the right to exist in its current form.

How Liberals Monetized Trauma: Catherine Liu on Marx, Trump, and identity politics

Richard Mellor

I have not heard of this woman before but I really enjoyed this video and agreed with much of her analysis and her criticism of the elite liberals and identity politics. She’s spot on regarding the Democratic Party. She also raises the need for a working class political organization as well. It will be interesting to hear what others think.

 

In relation US her description of the hatred of the liberal class by working people on the one hand definitely has some basis in the support for the right. As she says, US workers know we're exploited, but if that's the case, the open naked exporter is less repulsive than the do gooders whose motives are rooted in the view that they are deserving of their higher social status as they worked hard for it and are smart. Consequently their compassion and caring for the poor and those below them is based on the view their role is to help those of us that are lacking not due to a system that is inherently unfair but due to their failings.

 

When she talks of care workers that are among the lowest paid of the workforce she stresses the need to organise and to recognise that they have a set of skills rather than just being a carer in the abstract. I recall a few years ago when hotel/motel maids were forming unions or attempting to form a union due to the extreme exploitation of the work but also the constant threats of sexual harassment or violence as they find themselves in the living quarters and bedrooms of many males. 

 

Folks might remember the African hotel worker that was raped by a 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was the head of the IMF some years ago. The hell she had to go through. I have spoken with housekeeping staff many times and they shared similar stories with me. They liked that I told them I didn’t need the sheets changed and stuff like that so they could get a break and they thanked me but reminded me not to tell the front desk otherwise they would simply give them more work to do.

 

There is no doubt that Identity politics has been undermined somewhat over the past few years and it’s a step in the right direction. I do not have the writing skills to articulate my objects but they go as far back as intersectionality when I was called a class reductionist by some liberal for my objecting to its origins and application. I have to say, myself and many others are relieved that the pronoun fad has subsided.

White Identity, and Fear of Losing It, is Promoted to Undermine Working Class Unity. That's What The Elite Fear Most

By Navdeep Singh

2-16-26

The question of race is inseperable from the question of social class in the United States, since the very inception of the country. The protracted, large scale accumulation of wealth by a tiny, select few of the US population (the Plantation owners, industrialists, robber barons, oligarchs) went hand-in-hand with wholesale extermination, genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, et al. 

 

Today, when we see talking points about migrants, especially from poor, third world countries that the US bombed and starved to oblivion, forcing millions to flee, we need to be reminded that we have reached a new Gilded Age of income inequality, wealth disparity, where the Robber Barons are now bordering on becoming trillionaires. Hence the focus on violent, extreme, open racism. 

 

There need to be official scapegoats for massive income inequality and wealth disparity, and it’s almost always the most powerless, the most penniless, the ones most likely to be the victims of massive wealth accumulation. 

 

Racism serves a very devious and obvious purpose-to cover up the economic plunder by the very few. This is the greater context for the massive, open resurgence of yT Supremacy. 

 

It’s interesting to note that California ranks 49th out of 51 (just ahead of Hawaii and Washington D.C in terms of % of yT people. Places like Sacramento are even more distinctive in showing what the future US population will look like (30% yT, 28% Latino, 20% Asian, 14% Black). 

 

Side note: I remember reading that Brazil represents the future of the US, a melting pot. According to the 2022 census, Brazil had 88,252,121 White people, 92,083,286 Mestizos, 20,656,458 Black people, 850,132 Asian people, and 1,227,640 Indigenous people. 

 

Can you venture to guess what group of Brazilians, from those listed above, represent the faces of the ruling class? 

EU Membership and the Class Nature of a United Europe.

 

L. David McAllister R. Marc Botenger

Richard Brenner

 

I was watching one of the news channels that come on when you press the wrong button after trying to get Al Jazeera and it was a European channel and the first thing I saw was an EU sponsored interview with the president of Montenegro, a very young very posh man who had studied in Japan and he was a quiet, class act advocating all manner of liberal stuff whilst trying to get his country into the EU. 

So far so dull but then there was a genuinely interesting programme after that, which reminded me of how different debate is in the UK and in the EU, in which German MEP David McAllister, the disconcertingly named CDU spokesperson and prominent European People's Party member, debated Marc Botenga of the European Left Party and Workers Party of Belgium.

The subject of the debate was European enlargement and whilst McAllister predictably promoted it energetically, Botenga was neither for it nor against it because he insisted that they focus on the social content of the enlargement. 

This continued until they got to the question of Ukraine. Botenga argued it would outrageous to admit them to the European union given the very obvious violation of the social conditions for EU membership by the Ukrainian government including repression of straight unions, banning strikes, martial law and postponement of elections. 

McAllister retained an even voice as he replied saying that no one should overlook the terrible difficulties that the Ukrainian government is facing, they are under attack, they are being invaded, they want to be in the EU. Botenga replied simply: how does attacking their own trade unions and their own social provision help them defend themselves? 

And then he countered: what's more, Russia is not the only power interfering in the region. Finland's Prime Minister (or was it Lithuania, I can't recall) had recently been visiting Georgia joining opposition demonstrations. Imagine if a Russian politician did that in Western Europe. But above all, Russia was not the only country threatening Ukraine's right of self-determination because in the peace discussions right now, Trump and Zelensky are discussing selling off Donbass to the Americans, clear violation of the right of the nation to self-determination and its social protections at the same time. 

Now and only now McAllister lost his temper, now we saw what lay beneath the cultivated "social" veneer of German Christian Democracy.

 

He exploded into rage, spitting out hatred of Russia, denouncing Russian and only Russian online propaganda, insisting that Europe needed to protect itself against Russia, demanding that the socialists and the left should fall in line and defend Europe. Here we saw the man himself, a bilingual German and UK citizen who grew up in West Berlin and who for his 17th birthday present in January 1990 asked his parents to allow him to join the CDU. 

 

And through his genuine rage, the only honest moment in his entire performance, we saw the real class essence of the international alignment here, with German and French and British imperialism really seriously determined on war, and spokesperson for a working class party doing something that the representatives of the publicly recognised British left more often than not fail to do and making a *class* argument in response and looking all the stronger and more stable and more reasoned and more enlightened as a result . 

How We Separate Ourselves from the Constraints of the Nation State. It's Class Stupid.

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

8-29-25

I'm very proud of many things about the UK. No, not the inbreds that ponce off the taxpayer, not the rise of the right wing nationalists that take advantage of the trade union leadership and Labor Party's failure to address the multitude of problems British workers face, (poverty housing, health, immigration, etc) by blaming the victims. I saw one sign telling refugees and immigrants to go home. But they have no homes left, the US, British and other declining western powers have bombed them all.

All these crises are a by-product of British colonialism/Imperialism in the dying days of the capitalist system but the culprits need to deflect the blame that is theirs on to the weak, the poor, the dispossessed spreading fear in the minds of the resident population that they will lose their culture, their "Britishness" whatever the fuck that is as many of us have Celtic, Norse, French, German, Roman, Greek, Arabic and Iberian blood in our veins. 

Behind every English first poster, British first poster and other nice sounding names lies the scourge of fascism. It’s important to reflect on the fact that the color and ethnic origins of the vast majority of people that died at fascism's hand was white and European.

When I am asked about by Englishness, and I consider myself a hybrid here in the US, I have my feet strongly rooted in English soil as well as here, even though I was born in Burma/Myanmar and raised as a small Child in Nigeria. I have a strong connection to Nigeria that's never left me and the picture I include is of a Yoruba man named Abel that cared for me and warned me to not mess with the Ju Ju symbols as he took me out walking. He is showing us a Nigerian girl, an Albino with white skin. It's the only photo I have of him and he died in the Biafra War.  Why was I in those countries you ask? Well British capitalism was spreading democracy and peace all around the world silly.

I don't fall in to the bullshit patriotism line when I get off that plane at Heathrow that I will likely not be doing again; and I love to feel that ground beneath my feet. I love the ride on the Piccadilly line in to town, although now the Elizabeth line has replaced it somewhat, made the journey quicker. I feel at home. When I come back to the US I feel at home here too. But when people ask if I'm proud to be English I don't say yes to that question because I am not proud of colonialism, slavery, the stealing of land and everything we know about colonial powers in Africa, India, Ireland etc.  I also want to separate myself from all the frauds, the right wingers and wannbee fascists who make these claims. I was drawn to right wing ideas for a brief moment in the Enoch Powell era and am aware of the dangers.

The easiest way to separate myself from British colonial history and the orchestrators of it is to be proud of the identity that matters most. I am proud to be from the English/British working class, and a worker of the world. I am proud to be a member of the US working class. I don't identify with Trump, Obama, Biden and the history of the ruling class here and I don't identify with the inbred Royal Family their rotten lives and the British ruling class and their history. It's not my history like Peterloo is or the great Miner’s Strike in the 1980's or the Tolpuddle Martyr's or the levellers or the Chartists.

The first step is recognising our place in the world as it really is, working class people whose subsistence is earned through the selling of our labor power, not purchasing the labor power of others. Then when I go to a former colonial country and am asked what I am I say US working class or English working class. The King has the same skin tone as me and might like a cup of tea here and there, our similarity ends there.

Oh, one of the things I'm really proud of is that in the 2021 census published by the Office of National Statistics in the UK,  it shows the number of people in England and Wales identifying with ‘No religion’ jumped by over 8 million, from 25% to 37% between 2011 and 2021. This is what I call progress. Watch out for the US missionaries they send around the world to save us all and promote capitalism and the free market, mostly Protestant sects of one type or another, the Mormons being one of them. 

And if you're a British person of color and are approached by the Mormon recruiter, do not lose sight of the fact that they barred you from joining their club for a long time until the growth of the Black middle class in the US due to the Civil Rights movement and Black revolt meant there was some money to be found in that community.

 

Remember what one famous person said of the rotten system in which we live and work, as it arose from the ashes of feudalism:

 

“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

 

Have a nice day and don’t lose sight of what you really are.

 

Note: I chose that picture not because I am a huge fan of Gandhi, and I do not believe in a supreme being, but as a concession to the many dedicated fighters throughout history including in my small world, that do have a personal relationship or spiritual relationship with some form of higher power that, without doubt, has given them the strength to give their lives for all the oppressed people of the world.

Some people just don’t like music – it may be down to their brain wiring

Krakenimages.com/Shutterstock

Catherine Loveday, University of Westminster

When I ask a lecture theatre full of students how they would feel if they could never listen to a piece of music again, most are horrified. Many have been plugged into their headphones until the moment the class begins. But without fail, one or two will shyly admit that their lives would not change at all if music didn’t exist.

Psychologists call this “music anhedonia”, meaning an absence of pleasure for music. And a new paper from neuroscientists in Spain and Canada suggests it is caused by a problem with communication between different parts of the brain.

For many of us, apathy towards music seems unfathomable. Yet, for 5%-10% of the population, this is their norm.

I see it often in my own research and practice in people with memory loss, where I ask people to select favourite songs as a way of accessing significant memories.

It has always fascinated me that some people look at me blankly and say, “I’ve never been that bothered by music”. It is such a contrast to the majority who love to talk about their first record, or the tune played at their wedding.

Recent evidence shows considerable variation in the depth of people’s emotional response to music. Around 25% of the population are hyperhedonic, which is an almost obsessive urge to engage intensely and frequently with music.

Research in this field typically uses the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ), which asks people about the significance of music in daily life: how often they listen to records, whether they hum along, and if there are songs that give them a shiver down the spine.

Low scorers are classified as having music anhedonia and many researchers further verify this in the lab by measuring heart rate, sweat response and breathing while music is playing. For most of us, these physiological markers change dramatically during emotional songs. But in those with music anhedonia, there are often no physiological effects at all.

One theory is that reduced enjoyment for music may reflect a more generalised anhedonia, an absence of pleasure for anything. Often, this is linked to disruption to the reward pathways in the brain, in areas such as the nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal cortex and insula.

It is a common feature of depression, which, along with other mood disorders, can correlate with a lack of response to music . However, this does not explain specific music anhedonia, where people happily enjoy other rewards such as food, socialising and films, but remain indifferent to music.

Not every child made to take music lessons grows up to thank their parents. foto-lite/Shuttersock

An alternative possibility is that people with reduced interest in music simply don’t understand it, perhaps due to difficulties with processing melody and harmony. To test this, we can look at people with amusia – a deficit in music perception, which affects the ability to identify familiar tunes or detect wrong notes. This occurs when there is reduced activity in key regions in the frontotemporal cortex in the brain, which handles complex processing of pitch and melody. However, some people with the condition have an extreme and obsessional love of music.

In any case, other research shows that those with music anhedonia often have normal musical perception, with no problem recognising songs or distinguishing major from minor chords.

So, what is going on? The new paper provides a detailed analysis of all the research in this field to date. The researchers explain that while the brain networks underlying music perception and reward are both intact in people with music anhedonia, the communication between them is severely disrupted. There is little to no traffic between the auditory processing parts of the brain and the reward centre.

People with typical responses to music have significant activity in this pathway, which is higher for pleasant music than for neutral sounds. A 2018 study showed that you can increase music-induced pleasure by artificially stimulating these communication tracts using magnetic pulses.

The new analysis may give scientists insights into clinical conditions where everyday rewards seem to be reduced or enhanced, for example eating disorders, sex addictions and gambling problems.

These findings also challenge the common assumption that everyone loves music. Most people do, but not all, and the variation comes down to differences in the wiring of the brain. Sometimes it follows brain injury, but more often people are born this way, and a March 2025 study found evidence of a genetic link.

Music is everywhere – in shops, gyms, restaurants, healthcare settings – and it can be incredibly powerful. But perhaps we should resist the urge to see it as a panacea and respect the fact that for some, silence is golden.

Catherine Loveday, Professor, Neuropsychology, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.