From theory, action.

Ten days ago Stephanie Bottrill sat in the redbrick terrace house which had been home for 18 years to write notes to her loved ones, the Sunday People reports .

She ripped the pages from a spiral-bound notebook and placed them neatly in little brown envelopes.

There was one for her son. Another for her daughter. Her mother. Friends. And a very special one for the year-old grandson she doted on.

Then in the early hours of last Saturday Stephanie, 53, left her home for the last time, leaving her cat Joey behind as the front-door clicked shut.

She crossed her road in Meriden Drive, Solihull, to drop one of her letters and her house keys through a neighbour’s letterbox. Then she walked 15 minutes through the sleeping estate to Junction 4 of the M6.

And at 6.15am she walked straight into the path of a northbound lorry and was killed instantly. Stephanie Bottrill had become the first known suicide victim of the hated Bedroom Tax.

In the letter to her son, Steven, 27, she had written: “Don’t blame yourself for me ending my life. The only people to blame are the Government.”

Click through the link to read the full article.

Fuck the government. In the last month I’ve read so many articles in the Daily Mail, The Sun and The Telegraph that echo Tory rhetoric about this imaginary sea of benefit fraudsters as some lowlifes who just don’t want to work and the system has to punish them for being inadequate.

The result of that attitude is exactly this. A disabled woman who can’t work, doesn’t go onto disability living allowance because the media and politicians tell them that to do so would make them a scrounger. Because Thatcher sold all the council houses there’s a massive shortage so people are suddenly told to find another £80 a month to live in their family home. And because society is told the purse has to be tightened, and that people on benefits are to blame, whilst bankers send the economy plummeting and carry on taking their bonuses, people at the bottom feel they have nowhere else to turn.

Suicides and deaths due to the emotional trauma caused by the austerity measures have been on the rise. This is the first report I’ve come across of someone in the UK who’s left a suicide note blaming the government, but it has been happening already whether or not a note is left.

Fuck this is awful.

The government’s cuts to welfare benefits are causing real harm to a lot of innocent people. Nevertheless, remarkable numbers seem willing to support them, and all too ready to justify them with extreme aberrations. You can probably put some of this down to our straitened times. People struggling to get by in their own lives will find it hard to sympathise with those they feel are getting a free ride. However, at bottom, a lot of the bad feeling towards people on benefits comes from the way we now see them as a distinct, separate social group. Different from the rest of us. Worse than.

This would’ve been so useful a month ago when I was writing about the exact same thing for my dissertation.

sinidentidades:

21 December 2012 was supposed to be the doomsday that ended the Mayan calendar cycle, but instead it marked the resurgence of the indigenous Zapatistas of south-east Mexico. After more than a year and a half without a public statement, the rebel Mayans of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) marched in total silence along the streets of five cities in the state of Chiapas.

In this beginning of the new Mayan cycle, more than 40,000 members of Zapatista “social bases” (who support the military structure but are not directly involved in it) walked in the rain. They marched with discipline and dignity, their faces covered with masks. They came to the cities from distant mountain communities with no public transport, in the largest mobilisation since the emergence of the EZLN in 1994. When the demonstration ended, the Zapatista general command issued a brief statement signed by their spokesman Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos: “Did you hear? It is the sound of your world collapsing/it is our world coming back.”

It can’t be said that the Zapatistas reappeared, because they never left. The EZLN was founded 28 years ago, and for the first 10 years it grew beneath the radar; 18 years ago, it appeared in public. Since then, it has spoken at times and been silent at times, but it has never been inactive. It has repeatedly been declared dead or irrelevant, but it has always come back.

Its first public appearance was on 1 January 1994, the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) came into force. Zapatistas declared war on the Mexican government and took military control of five cities in Chiapas. They fought for 10 days and finally accepted a truce in order to negotiate a peace. The painstaking peace process was derailed when the federal government refused to honour the commitment it made in February 1996 to acknowledge indigenous rights and culture in the national constitution.

To combat the Zapatistas, then-president Ernesto Zedillo, of the Institutional Revolutionary party (which returned to power in 2012), promoted low-intensity warfare and the formation of paramilitary groups. On 22 December 1997, one of those groups killed 45 people, most of them unarmed women and children who were praying for peace, in the Chiapas community of Acteal.

The magnitude of the 21 December Zapatista protest indicates that the counter-insurgency strategy followed by several governments has failed. It shows that the Zapatista project is a genuine expression of the Mayan world and many poor mestizo peasants in Chiapas. Guided by its own political calendar, faithful to its ethical commitments, and with the might of the government against it, the EZLN has reinforced its autonomous forms of governance and kept alive its political authority among the country’s indigenous peoples; its international networks of solidarity also remain active. .

Zapatistas have two levels of government, corresponding in part to the territorial settlements of the indigenous peoples. One is the regional government, the Council of Good Governance. The other is the autonomous municipality, which acts on a local level. Within these municipalities, the social bases elect their authorities and govern themselves, administering justice and solving land conflicts.

In their territories, the rebels have made their health and education systems function without the federal and state governments; they have organised production and commercialisation and maintain a standing military. They have solved the challenge of the generational replacement of military officers. As if these achievements were not enough, they have successfully tackled the menaces of drug-trafficking, public security and migration.

The EZLN has joined the new game of Mexican politics without an invitation, and now sits at the table. Its resurgence will challenge, and possibly even change, some of the rules of this often dirty game.

In a handy PDF download!

Senior jobcentre executives have warned staff of the risk of benefit claimants attempting suicide as controversial changes to sicknessbenefits are being pushed through.

The warning, contained in an internal email sent to staff by three senior managers of the government-run jobcentres, warns staff that ill-handling of benefit changes for vulnerable claimants could have “profound results” and highlights the case of one suicide attempt this year.

It emphasises the need for the “utmost care and sensitivity” when dealing with customers, as a result of “difficult changes which some of our more vulnerable customers may take some time to accept and adjust to”.

The email, adds: “Very sadly, only last week a customer of DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] attempted suicide” – which it adds is “said to be the result of receiving a letter” informing him that his sickness benefit would be cut off.

And yet the Tories label us the violent thugs …

A teenager was taken to hospital when his hair was set alight by English Defence League supporters who attacked an anti-Jubilee party in Newcastle.

The 18-year-old, who does not wish to be identified, was hit by a burning firework thrown during the clash at Grey’s Monument between more than 100 English Defence League and National Front members and anti-Jubliee protestors.

sinidentidades:

LONDON — Some 12,500 officers will be deployed daily during the Olympic Games in the country’s largest ever pre-planned policing operation, according to the Metropolitan force.

With 67 days to go until the event begins, police revealed that 52 forces from around Britain will provide officers for the operation, which will run from June 4 until September 16, after the close of the Paralympic Games.

There will be around 12,500 officers on duty during peak days with 9,500 operating in London, according to a statement released by police.

Specialist officers trained in search techniques, marine, public order and firearms will be on call along with the mounted sections, dog units and motorcycle escorts.

“Every force is playing its part in delivering a fantastic summer of celebration,” said National Olympic Security Coordinator Chris Allison.

“The summer of 2012 will be a busy and challenging time for the British police service, but with confidence and pride I can say we have the officers we need to keep the Games and our wider communities safe and secure,” he added.

A security force of more than 40,000 people, backed by a huge intelligence operation, is to guard the Games — which start on July 27 — at a cost of £553 million ($877 million, 662 million euros).

Some 13,500 of the security personnel will be from the Ministry of Defence and armed forces, working alongside police and more than 16,000 private security guards and unpaid volunteers.

Security chiefs are believed to be preparing for a range of threats including a “lone wolf” terrorist, riots or cyber-attacks.

In February thousands of emergency personnel held a two-day exercise simulating a terror attack on the Underground train network during the Olympics.

tooyoungforthelivingdead:

Mr Justice Eady said in his judgment:

“The [previous] judge should have feared for the loss of trust in those hitherto believed to be neutral observers if such observers maybe too readily compelled to hand over their material. It is the neutrality of the press which affords them protection and augments their ability freely to obtain and disseminate visual recording of events.”

Sometimes I like our legal system.