I repost stuff from elsewhere

[sabotabby]

It's not like I don't read the newspaper every day, but if I didn't read LJ/my feeds, I wouldn't know about...

The Georgia Prisoners' Strike.

On Thursday morning, December 9, 2010, thousands of Georgia prisoners refused to work, stopped all other activities and locked down in their cells in a peaceful protest for their human rights.
...
· A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK
· EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
· DECENT HEALTH CARE
· AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS
· DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS
· NUTRITIONAL MEALS
· VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
· ACCESS TO FAMILIES
· JUST PAROLE DECISIONS
...
The Georgia Department of Corrections is at http://www.dcor.state.ga.us and their phone number is 478-992-5246

Or about Jody McIntyre, a student protester who was dragged from his wheelchair by police during the London protests. China Miéville is at his scathing best on the way the media covered it.

Or this story, brought to my attention by springheel_jack:

"One individual had two boxes attached, one box taped to his leg and one box seemingly taped to his forehead," he said.

"There were what seemed to be wires attached to them," he added.

Go on, guess what it was.

ETA: All this is SRS BUSINESS, so here's one that radiumhead found.





You're welcome.

Comments

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I got news of the Georgia strike that way too.

[sabotabby]

The other ones have at least been on the Beeb, although buried a bit, but I haven't seen anything about Georgia at all.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I laughed like a maniac when I read about the boxes and wires stories.

Apparently the dude was a good sport due to his job and "heritage".

Not saying, so as not to spoil the surprise :)

[sabotabby]

Those ethnic types. You know how it is.

I would have either pissed myself in terror or pissed myself laughing, but either way it wouldn't have been dignified.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Also, you know Jody McIntyre was living in Rammalah and reporting from there. He writes/wrote (not sure) fir Electronic Intifada.

[sabotabby]

I didn't know that, in fact!

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I am amazed that you manage to read the news every day. I have avoided it for weeks now, since Briain has become a scary squishy bleak fog with evil with a smiley Tory face stalking the land and eating babies for breakfast.

I was going to post about Jody McIntyre, but I actually thought, "no point - Sabotabby will post it." Also I haven't bothered to read about it myself as it sounds too bloody miserable.

For penance I am getting up early tomorrow to protest outside Downing Street about the end of social housing as we know it, and hand out leaflets about the Global Women's Strike and Mothers' March on behalf of the women's centre.

[sabotabby]

Well, I read the Star and usually the Globe online in the morning with my coffee, anyway. Not the Guardian or the Beeb, which I used to do when I worked in an office and didn't have such a hell-commute.

Nothing about McIntyre in the Canuckistani press as far as I can tell, though there's been stuff about the tuition protests in general. We had a guy get his prosthetic leg ripped off during the G20 protests so I guess it's a thing with cops now, beating up people with disabilities for the lulz.

Good luck tomorrow, and stay safe!

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm way too cowardly and shy to get into big fights with police. Although I was very tempted the other day when it was all going on only half an hour's walk away. I am going on my own, because I volunteered to do leafletting, poo! I won't even have Sausage doggie with me, although good thing, as the police might try to eat him or something. They patted him on the Demo we went on in October, though.

The government is getting rid of proper council housing tenancies, making it possible only to get short term tenancies, and allowing councils to charge higher rents, thus defeating the point. I am very lucky as I have a tenancy pretty much for life unless I do something silly like kill a neighbour, or not pay rent for a year. People are going to protest tomorrow by lying in cardboard boxes outside Downing Street, although I think they made sleeping in cardboard boxes illegal more or less long ago, and there will be hundreds of people sleeping in cardboard boxes around Downing Street soon anyway, what with all these insane benefits cuts.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

If cardboard boxes are illegal, how about bubble wrap?

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Good question, though I think it's the sleeping in the streets bit rather than the wrapping that irks the powers that be...bubble wrap would be a good idea anyway, maybe under the cardboard, to keep one insulated...

actually I'm not sure what the law is at the moment, but people always have and alas still do sleep in the streets. There were far fewer homeless people recently than about ten years ago, thanks to the Big Issue and homeless shelters and support, but it looks like that is about to be reversed now with all the job losses and public spending cuts. Wah.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Oh I meant Britain not Briain. Brian, whatever. All gone squishy, this murky damp land.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

That's adorable!

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Good for those prisoners!WTH on the "box with wires" story and ...too angry to comment on the story about the abuse of a PWD. IT's a sore spot for me today thanks to the asshole suicide prevention group that told me to fuck off last year now wanting money from me :/

[sabotabby]

What the shit? Isn't it part of the job of suicide prevention groups to not tell people to fuck off? This would seem critical.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

I may have overdramatized it since our last communication was during a horrible bout of depression last year but it went like this: I offered to do a reading from my memoir about living with depression as part of their annual fundraiser and split book sale proceeds. They told me tersely that they weren't interested and then...stopped speaking to me at all, even to let me know when the suicide walk was. I wouldn't have been so hurt if I hadn't been very actively involved with them up to that point.

Since then I've decided that I won't give my time or energy to any group that doesn't put PWMI on its radar. I mean, fuck, I'm both a suicide survivor AND someone who has struggled with suicidal ideation. OMG I'M A SPACE ALIEN!

Sorry to tl;dr there. I've been angry about it for like a year now.

[sabotabby]

No apology necessary. I'd be right pissed too.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* Yeah, I mean a part of me thinks that maybe I just misread the situation, and I don't want to seem like I'm just talking shit about them because I'm angry, but it was really, really hurtful whether or not they'd intended it to be. If they'd have said "we can't do that right now but maybe next year!" or even "that's a good idea, but we don't want to do it," I'd have been fine.

I also got irritated that none of the survivors in the (admittedly two) videos for national suicide awareness day they put out talked about struggling with suicidal thoughts and mental illness before or after the suicide. Seriously, they couldn't have found ONE person to talk about this?

Bah! Anyway, sorry to derail. Thanks for these links :)

[sabotabby]

Well, and also they stopped talking to you after you were doing work with them. That strikes me as exceedingly passive-aggressive, and inconsiderate, and even potentially dangerous to your own mental health.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

i re-read the email recently and I remember being so demoralized after that exchange that I didn't go to the planning meeting after, despite saying previously I'd be there (I'm not proud of that, but I was really sick at the time and thought, hey, they don't want me around so why bother?)...which is when they stopped talking to me.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

ER that should read two that I've seen*. I did'nt participate in the event last year or this year so they may well have done things differently.

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

I once called a suicide hotline and was put on hold. Their message, in retrospect, was probably very nice, and had more to do with the increase in calls, but I heard it as "IF YOU HAVE A FRIEND, CALL THEM INSTEAD BECAUSE WE ARE OVERLOADED."

[sabotabby]

WUT

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Wow fuck them. Nice to know that people with depression can just, like, reach out to friends because self-isolation and being abandoned because people "can't deal" with you isn't part of depression at all!

Sorry you had to deal with that. I mean, I get being overloaded because these places are almost always volunteer but come ON. Give another number.

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

I don't read the newspaper. They never have anything important in them. I just watch ontd_p.

Also, I somehow knew what the last one was. The forehead gives it away, I think.

Also, mmm bacon.

[sabotabby]

For some reason, suicide bombers seem not to strap bombs to their foreheads. It is too obvious or something.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

If I was a preacher, I would get an entire sermon out of the fact that people are now confusing passages from the Torah with high explosives.

(I am aware that that's a link to the NT, but it was too appropriate not to link.)

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

This is why they won't let you take the Logos on an airplane anymore

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Word.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

+1 mod up

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

haha, youre welcome

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

i was gonna commit suicide, then i saw the bacon frame. That cheered me up.

[sabotabby]

The bacon frame gives me the will to fight another day.

I swear, I'd be monumentally more fucked up and depressed if it weren't for the internet.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I don't know how people managed before there were an infinite number of funny cat pictures on tap.

[sabotabby]

They just had motivational posters like this on their cubicles:

[ironed_orchid]

I remember those!

They were never funny enough.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Also, Richard Littlejohn is pretty high on the list of unpleasant people.

[sabotabby]

I know, right? What's with all of those uppity wheelchair-bound blokes acting like they can just go out in public and exercise their civil right to protest?

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Christ, that is pure nastiness! What a shit!

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

That's well-written and effective. I can tell because it makes me want to set fire to his balls.

[lisechen.livejournal.com]

I actually lol'd.

[misfratz.livejournal.com]

... I hate my country. That is fucking repulsive.

[ironed_orchid]

It's even worse than it looks on paper because it's a reference to a recurring Little Britain skit about a guy in a wheelchair who manipulates his carer. So, yeah, pretty vile.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

two other good pics on wils site.

1. him dressed as an elf giving the camera the finger
2. wil with like, 20 smurfs in a bear hug.

wesley grew up to be strange.

[sabotabby]

He's kind of awesome. I haven't read his blog in awhile but I remember it being really good (albeit not bacon-frame good).

[misfratz.livejournal.com]

I guessed what the boxes were due to my primary school religious/cultural education. But to be fair, they're police, so they were probably kicked out of school for being violently psychotic long before then.

[night--watch.livejournal.com]

It's probably just the ubiquitous Xmas music messing with my neurons, but I found myself reading the prisoner's demands to the tune of "12 days of Xmas". Possibly this could be used to further in some way by persons more talented than myself, but I doubt it.

Thanks for the image, also. I like how Blanche is totally peeking at the DM's notes.