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Samer Issawi’s Hunger Strike Shines a Spotlight on Israel’s Inhumanity

By , February 25, 2013 6:11 am

Israel showed bad faith in rearresting a man exchanged for Gilad Shalit — and worse faith by holding him in administrative detention.

Administrative detention: the practice of arresting and holding persons without trial and without informing them of what crimes they are suspected of. Since the end of the British mandate of Palestine, Israel has exercised this policy on thousands of Palestinians. Israel’s refusal to relinquish it could prove deadly to hunger striker, Samer Issawi.

In October 2011 Issawi was released from Israeli prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel, but just nine months later was rearrested. Receiving no information on the basis for his re-incarceration, including the crimes he was supposedly being detained for, Issawi launched a hunger strike shortly thereafter.

The world is finally taking notice now that Issawi’s strike that has persisted over 200 days. A hearing last Thursday in an Israeli court to appeal Issawi’s sentence had similar results to past appeals. He was once again denied his right to trial leading to clashes in which IDF soldiers fired tear gas canisters at protestors outside Ofer prison in the West Bank.

These events come as President Obama plans to visit the region within in the coming month, with stops planned in both Ramallah and Tel Aviv. Senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat, has appealed to the courts, “I urge Israel to release these people. The last thing we want is for things to get out of hand before President Obama visits.”

Another unnamed PLO official said that U.S. ambassador Dan Shapiro had assured him of the release of 550 Palestinian prisoners prior to Obama’s visit. But the release of Palestinian prisoners should not be contingent upon a visit from the sitting US president, and hunger strikers like Samer Issawi should not be dependent on international pressure to receive a fair trial.

Renee Lott is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.

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Hunger Striking for Disarmament in France

By , October 1, 2012 11:15 am

nuclear-disarmament-france-hunger-strike-acdn-matagneOnly a few weeks after Francois Hollande’s election, former Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard came up with an original budget-balancing solution: if France chose to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, he argued, “16 billion euros that serve absolutely no purpose” could be saved over five years.

Apparently unimpressed, Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian immediately retorted that the nuclear bomb was essential to the nation’s security: “We won’t be miserly about our life-insurance,” he declared.

His reaction was echoed on both sides of the political spectrum, reflecting France’s historical attachment to the nuclear program initiated by Charles De Gaulle in 1958. Throughout the recent presidential campaign, as in all the previous ones, the topic was not subject to controversy.

It is against this seemingly immutable status quo that the citizens’ organization Action des Citoyens Pour le Desarmement Nucleaire (ACDN) has been fighting since 1996. After years of activism for international nuclear disarmament, ACDN’s president Jean-Marie Matagne decided to take dramatic action and begin a hunger strike.

“It was a desperate measure. We had already done everything that was feasible as citizens,” said Matagne, a 68-year-old Philosophy PhD, in a phone interview. According to him, there is an “omerta,” a systematic blockade on the subject of nuclear disarmament in the French national media and political sphere, sustained by a militant nuclear-military lobby. His hunger strike was aimed at grabbing the attention of newly elected President Francois Hollande after he ignored several letters from Matagne during the campaign.

On the day of Hollande’s inauguration, Matagne began his fasting and asked for an audience with the new president. Two weeks later, he and fellow hunger-striker Luc Dazy were stopped by police a few feet away from the Elysee palace, as they were on their way to make an appointment to meet the president. After more unanswered letters to Hollande, Matagne finally received a response from Hollande’s chief of staff referring him to the Ministry of the Environment — a response that Matagne calls “near insulting.” To him, the issue can only be dealt with by the president, who is the sole possessor of the nuclear strike capacity.

After 42 days of complete fast, Jean-Marie Matagne interrupted his hunger strike. However, up to 100 ACDN members and supporters throughout the country have undertaken a relay hunger strike in which they take turns to fast.

Matagne declared that he had given up on meeting Hollande “until [Hollande] changes his mind and opens the possibility for a referendum.” The project for a referendum on nuclear disarmament was recently approved by the French Green Party, Europe-Ecologie-Les-Verts, who are part of Hollande’s government in parliament. To Matagne, who is hoping for his movement to keep growing in the following months, this is already a first victory.

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Hunger Striking for Labor Rights in Colombia

By , August 13, 2012 12:56 pm

Photo by Austin Robles.

Minutes before he started to sew his mouth shut, Jorge Alberto Parra Andrade explained his rationale to me: “Essentially GM gave us a choice: to die of hunger or to die waiting for them to solve this problem.”

Mr. Parra is one of 68 injured workers fired by General Motors Colombia who started a protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá one year ago, on August 1st, 2011. The Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL) had two simple demands: fair compensation for injuries incurred in the workplace and reintegration into GM’s workforce. In commemoration of their protest’s anniversary — and without any movement on their case — four leaders of ASOTRECOL decided to sew their mouths closed and initiate a hunger strike. Another three joined on August 8th, and a small group will join each week until their cases are resolved.

ASOTRECOL workers claim that they were among 200 employees injured on the job in GM’s plant in Colombia’s capital city. The majority of ASOTRECOL’s members have undergone multiple surgeries, most commonly to treat spinal injuries, tendinitis, carpal tunnel, rotator cuff syndrome, and lumbar damage. After working their bodies until they were disabled and unable to perform manual labor any longer, GM fired them and refused to pay medical benefits or a severance package. ASOTRECOL also alleges that GM lost, altered, erased, or fabricated their medical histories to exclude their injuries from the company’s official records, and that the Ministry of Labor approved the documents.

Consequently, GM does not accept the injuries as work-related, instead claiming that they were incurred outside the plant. Luis Alvarado Vásquez, the Inspector at the Ministry of Labor who reviewed ASOTRECOL members’ records, was convicted for falsifying their records and approving their illegal firings. He was suspended from work for 12 months and has a warrant out for his arrest. However, since his cases were not automatically voided, ASOTRECOL must reverse them by entering Colombia’s lengthy legal process.

The injured workers and their families do not have time to wait years navigating the legal system. The dramatic move by ASOTRECOL activists to start a hunger strike reflects their growing desperation. Before receiving six stitches in his lips, Carlos Ernesto Trujillo explained that the workers are running out of money to pay for their homes or support their spouses and children. “They fired us without just cause, endangering us and our families,” he said. “We are taking this decision because our health has worsened each day, we’re losing our houses, we practically live in the street, and we’ve been forgotten by the government.”

Inaction by the United States

ASOTRECOL’s case is especially alarming considering the U.S. government’s stake in General Motors. Two years before ASOTRECOL began its strike, GM filed for bankruptcy protection and reorganization with the United States government. It was the fourth-largest Chapter 11 filing in U.S. history, and the U.S. government became the company’s largest shareholder with 60-percent ownership. When GM failed to stay afloat after the Bush administration pumped $ 20 billion into the company in 2008, the Obama administration shelled out another $ 30 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2009. At the start of 2012, the United States still had $ 25 billion invested in GM.

GM seems to have recovered from its financial turmoil and this year reclaimed its position as the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States. However, even the billion-dollar quarterly profit margins for GM did not translate into a willingness to settle the small claims of ASOTRECOL members. The first week of the hunger strike, GM attended a mediation session with representatives from the International Labor Organization, the Office of Inspector General, and the Ministry of Labor, but walked out on the first day. GM did not even stay at the negotiating table long enough to initiate a dialogue with ASOTRECOL.

The U.S. government has remained silent on GM’s situation as well, despite its pledges to support labor rights in the Colombia. The United States walked a tight rope this past year as the Obama administration tried to convince Congress to pass a free trade agreement (FTA) with the South American country. Signed by the Bush administration, the FTA stalled for years in Congress due to concerns over the country’s abysmal labor rights record. According to journalist Garry Leech, almost 75 percent of the world’s union leaders killed in the last 20 years were Colombian, and less than 5 percent of these killings have resulted in a conviction for the perpetrators. In 2011, out of 76 union leaders killed globally, 29 were Colombian.

Despite Colombia’s record as the “most dangerous country in the world to be a unionist,” the U.S. government passed the FTA, which went into effect in May 2012. The countries implemented an “Action Plan for Labor Rights” to provide enhanced protection for Colombia’s most at-risk industries. Still, seven unionists have been killed in Colombia this year, and many more have received death threats.

ASOTRECOL is a case in point for labor rights violations in Colombia. The situation of these workers is all the more deplorable given the U.S. government’s promises to protect labor leaders while at the same time remaining one of GM’s largest shareholders. Although ASOTRECOL’s case is little-known in the United States, U.S. taxpayers are de facto GM shareholders. The U.S. government should recognize its two-sided stance on this case and pressure GM to stop ignoring these workers before they die of starvation. Mr. Parra and other fired workers’ resolve in their hunger strike is evident. “We must reclaim our rights and demand an end to the human rights violations committed by General Motors. GM must answer for its actions and what they have done to us,” concluded Parra. “If necessary, we are willing to die fighting for justice.”

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“The Hunger Games”: A Glimpse at the New World Order?

By , April 6, 2012 9:08 am

“The Hunger Games”: A Glimpse at the New World Order?
By: The Vigilant Citizen (sent by Invictus) on: 06.04.2012 [10:21 ] (149 reads)

The hit movie “The Hunger Games” takes place in a dystopian future where the poor and wretched masses live under the high tech tyranny of a wealthy elite. Is the movie depicting the kind of society the elite is trying to establish for the New World Order? We’ll look at characteristics of the world presented in “The Hunger Games” and how they relate to plans for a New World Order.

Pushed by a gigantic marketing campaign, The Hunger Games did not take long to become a world-wide sensation, especially among teenagers and young adults. Sometimes referred to as the new Twilight, The Hunger Games has similar components to the previous book-to-movie craze (i.e. a young girl torn between two guys) but takes place in a very different context.

Set in a dystopian future (why is the future always “dystopian”?), The Hunger Games paints a rather grim picture of the world of tomorrow, whether it be from a social, economical or political point of view. In short, it is a big-brotherish nightmare where a rich elite thrives on the backs of a starving population. Meanwhile, the perversity and voyeurism of mass media is taken to absurd levels and is used by the government as a glue to keep its unjust social order intact. Is The Hunger Games giving teenagers a glimpse of a not-too-distant future? It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see the elite are trying to take the world in that direction. Is the author Suzanne Collins communicating a strong anti-NWO message to the youth by showing its dangers or is it getting the youth used to the idea? Let’s look at the fictional, yet possible, future world of The Hunger Games.

Note: This article is about the movie and not the book series. The movie has been formatted in a different way and conveys a slightly different message.
The NWO for Teenagers

The Hunger Games takes place in a context that is strikingly on-par with descriptions of the New World Order as planned by today’s global elite. One of the main characteristics of the New World Order is the dissolving of regular nation-states to form a single world government to be ruled by a central power. In The Hunger Games, this concept is fully represented as the action takes place in Panem, a totalitarian nation that encompasses the entire North-American territory. The United States and Canada have therefore merged into a single entity, a step that many predict that will happen before the full-on creation of the NWO.

The President of Panem addressing the Nation.

In Panem, the concepts of democracy and freedom have disappeared from America to be replaced by a high-tech dictatorship based on surveillance, monitoring, mass-media indoctrination, police oppression and a radical division of social classes. The vast majority of the citizens of Panem live in third-world country conditions and are constantly subjected poverty, famine and sickness. These difficult living conditions are apparently the result of a devastating event that engendered the complete economic collapse of North America. In District 12, home of the hero Katniss Everdeen, the locals live in conditions similar to the pre-industrial era where families of coal miners lived makeshift in shacks and eat rodents as meals.

While the masses look as if they are living in the 1800s, they are nevertheless subjugated to the high-tech rule of the Capitol, which uses technology to monitor, control and indoctrinate the masses. Surveillance cameras, RFID chips and 3D holograms are abundantly used by the government to manipulate the will of a weak and uneducated population (although there are signs of solidarity and rebelliousness among the peasants). To preserve the fragile social order, the Capitol relies on a massive police force that is always ready repress any kind of uprising. The workers are often rounded up in civilian camps where they are shown state-sponsored propaganda videos. Panem is therefore a high-tech police state ruled by a powerful elite that seeks to keep the masses in poverty and subjugation. As we’ve seen in previous articles on this site, all of these concepts are also thoroughly represented in other forms of media as there appears to be a conscious effort to normalize the ideas of a high-tech police state as the only normal evolution of the current political system.

Living in sharp contrast to the proletariat, the elite in The Hunger Games inhabits the glistening Capitol city and indulges in all sorts of extravagances and fashion trends. This upper-echelon of society perceives the rest of the population as an inferior race to be ridiculed, tamed and controlled. All valuable resources have been vacuumed from the people living in the districts to profit the Capitol, creating a clear and insurmountable divide between Regular People and The Elite. The concept of an opulent elite ruling over the dumbed-down and impoverished masses (thus making them easily manageable) is an important aspect of the New World Order and it is clearly depicted in The Hunger Games. The government’s reliance on high-tech surveillance and mass media to keep the population in check is something we are already seeing and, if we keep going in that direction, the world of The Hunger Games will soon become reality. There is another concept important to the occult elite that is at the heart of The Hunger Games, however: Blood sacrifices to strike fear and gain power.

Blood Sacrifices for the Elite

Katniss is selected as tribute of her district.

The government of Panem created the Hunger Games in order to remind the masses of the “great treason” they have committed by engaging in a rebellion. As punishment for their insubordination, the twelve districts of Panem must offer to the Capitol one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to be part of The Hunger Games. The teenagers must fight to the death in an outdoor arena in a Roman Gladiator-like event that is televised across the nation. The rules of the Games reflect the elite’s contempt and total lack of respect for the masses. The name of the Games itself is a reminder of the state of perpetual starvation the lower class is purposely kept in by the rulers in order to better control it.

The boys and girls that are selected to take part in The Hunger Games are called “tributes”, a term that usually describes a payment rendered by a vassal to his lord and thus even reflects the servitude of the mass to its rulers. Since time immemorial, blood sacrifices were considered to be the highest form of “tribute” to gods and, on an occult level, were said to wield the most potent power to be tapped by rulers and sorcerers. The same way ancient Carthaginians sacrificed infants to the god Moloch, inhabitants of Panem sacrifice their children to the Capitol. The Hunger Games are therefore a modern version of these ancient rituals that the masses had to participate in to avoid the wrath of their superiors. The entire nation of Panem is forced to watch the sacrificial ritual that takes place in the Capitol, stirring up fear, anger and blood lust within them, amplifying the power of the ritual. We’ve seen in previous articles that the deaths of specific people (Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse) become such a media event that they are, in fact, mega-rituals that entire nations participate in. The Hunger Games reflect this concept of highly publicized mega-rituals.

“Tributes” for The Hunger Games become the property of the state and are revoked of all their rights.

In The Hunger Games, the ritualistic death of young people chosen from the mass is sold as a sporting event, a nation-wide celebration that is packaged as a reality show. Not only do the poor people participate in these demeaning events, they even cheer for their favorites. Why do they accept all of this? One of the reasons is that mass media can get people to accept anything … if it is entertaining.
Appealing to the Basest Instincts

The games are broadcast to the nation in the form of a reality-show, complete with TV hosts who analyze the action, interview the tributes and judge their performance. The tributes are so indoctrinated in this culture that they readily accept the rules of the game and turn are fully willing to start killing to win the Games. The masses also actively participate in the event, cheering for their district’s representatives, even though the entire event celebrates the sacrifice of their own. This reflects a sad but true fact concerning mass media: Any kind of message can reach people if it manages to capture their attention. There are two things that automatically, almost irresistibly, grab our attention: Blood and sex, the remnants of our primal instincts. The sheer violence of the event grabs the attention of the masses, who forget that the Games serve as a reminder of the people’s servitude to its elite. This concept is already well-known and fully exploited in today’s mass media, as elite-sponsored messages are constantly sold to consumers as being “entertainment”. The Hunger Games therefore aptly portray the role of media in the manipulation of public opinion. Will the movie help young people realize this fact?

At one point in The Hunger Games, the death of a little girl shocked the people to a point that it brought a brief moment of lucidity and solidarity as the kill highlighted the atrocity of the Games. The live broadcasting of the death lead to a violent uprising in her district as the locals realized that they were willing participants in something terrible. The uprising was quickly quelled however, by the ever-present police force of the state. Furthermore, in order to prevent further social trouble, the producers of the show introduced a new element to the show: Love between Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, the girl and the boy from District 12. By introducing love (and, by extension, sex) into the show, the producers managed to quell the masses and brought them back to their usual state of silent stupor. This part of the movie reflects how mass media is used by the powers that be today. The worldwide reach of The Hunger Games series itself proves that stories that cleverly feature the ingredients of sex and violence are bound to get people hooked. And, even though The Hunger Games seems to be denouncing the perversity of violence in mass media, it sure brings more of it into movie theatres.
Desensitizing to a New Type of Violence

While there is no shortage of violence in Hollywood, The Hunger Games movie crosses a boundary that is rarely seen in movies: Violence by minors and towards minors. In this PG-13 movie we see kids aged between 12 and 18 violently stabbing, slashing, strangling, shooting and breaking the necks of other children – scenes that are seldom seen in Hollywood movies. While it is surely a way for the movie the grab the attention of the movie’s target audience (which happens to be teenagers aged 12 to 18) The Hunger Games brings to the forefront a new form of violence that was previously deemed too disturbing to portray in movies. But in the particular kill-or-be-killed scenario of The Hunger Games, the viewers easily go beyond this psychological barrier and find themselves yelling stuff at the movie like “Come on, Katniss, take your bow and shoot that vicious little f**cker in the head!”.
In Conclusion

The Hunger Games is set in world that is exactly what is described to be the New World Order: A rich and powerful elite, an exploited and dumbed-down mass of people, the dissolving of democracies into a police state entities, high-tech surveillance, mass media used for propaganda and a whole lot of blood rituals. There is indeed nothing optimistic in the dystopian future described in The Hunger Games. Even human dignity is revoked as the masses are forced to watch their own children killing each others as if they were caged animals. That being said, there is little to no difference between movie goers who watch the movie The Hunger Games and the masses in the movie that witness the cruelty of the Games. Both are willing participants in an event that portrays the sacrifice of their own under the amused eye of the elite. Furthermore, one can argue that the movie accomplishes the same functions as the Games in the movie: Distracting the masses with blood and sex while reminding it of the elite’s power.

Is The Hunger Games attempting to warn an apathetic youth of the danger of allowing the current system to devolve into a totalitarian nightmare? Or is it simply programming it to perceive the coming of a New World Order as an inevitability? That question is up for debate. But reading what is being said in the mass media about The Hunger Games, it seems there is an even more important question up for debate: Are you Team Peeta or Team Gale?

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Bolivian protesters go on hunger strike

By , February 25, 2012 11:43 am

Disabled Bolivians demanding government subsidy set up camp in La Paz following clashes outside parliament building. View full post on AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)

Palestinian detainee ends hunger strike

By , February 21, 2012 7:10 am

Israel agrees to free Khader Adnan on April 17 as part of deal to end his 66-day fast over his illegal detention. View full post on AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)

Deal to end Palestinian’s hunger strike

By , February 21, 2012 6:33 am

Israel agrees to free Khader Adnan on April 17 in return for ending his 66-day fast over his illegal detention. View full post on AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)

Israel to free Palestinian hunger striker

By , February 21, 2012 4:27 am

Khader Adnan to be freed after being on fast for 66 days against his detention without charge, his lawyer says. View full post on AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)

Israel court to hear hunger striker’s appeal

By , February 21, 2012 1:08 am

Supreme Court brings forward case of Khader Adnan, detained without charge, as he battles for life after 66-day fast. View full post on AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)

Thousands rally for West Bank hunger striker

By , February 17, 2012 11:46 pm

Massive show of support for jailed Palestinian Khader Adnan, who is “in immediate danger of death”, medical NGO says. View full post on AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)