The content on this webpage contains paid/affiliate links. When you click on any of our affiliate link, we/I may get a small compensation at no cost to you. See our affiliate disclosure for more info -----------------------
Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 12:33 pm
Having bravely achieved absolutely nothing, both Saddam Hussein and Cindy Sheehan last week ended their Juice Diets for Justice. In fact, Cindy was tricked into eating by a whimsical embassy staffer guarding Iraqi PM Nuri al-Malikito during his Washington visit:
An embassy official told her he’d get her some face time with Al-Maliki if she moved away from the embassy and ended her hunger strike. “So we moved and ended our fast,” Sheehan told The News’ Ken Bazinet. “He never called back.”
Typical man! Saddam’s diet attempt ended amid widespread loathing, according to the New York Times; moreover, he has “tarnished the hunger strike’s idealistic image”:
Saddam Hussein ended his 19-day hunger strike last Wednesday with a meal of beef, rice and Coca-Cola, but he had little to show for his starvation. Iraqis in particular, living day-to-day with brutal sectarian violence, viewed Mr. Hussein’s self-sacrifice as an insult.
“Saddam’s hunger strike didn’t work because it came from someone who is finished in Iraq and has no political or personal value for the Iraqi people,” said Fauwzya al-Attiya, a sociologist at Baghdad University. “Most of us wish he was executed just to end this problem so we can face our other problems.”
But if Mr. Hussein tarnished the hunger strike’s idealistic image, his effort also reflected its declining strength as a political weapon. Fasting for a cause is less novel, what constitutes a fast is more loosely defined, and the technology of force-feeding has grown less barbarous, say historians and human rights activists. Consequently, the hunger strike has started to lose its power to command attention.
No kidding. At least Sheehan will now be able to enjoy life in Crawford, where locals are in a welcoming mood:
“I’d wish they’d go away and never come back,” Westerfield, a lifelong Crawford resident, said Friday while sitting on a bench outside a gas station on Main Street. “I wish she’d stay away. Crawford’s a Republican town, and she’s a dumb Democrat.”
- o/t Criminal lawyer charged after being filmed trying to grab the flag from the bonnet of the Prime Minister’s car during a violent anti Israel demonstration.The P.M. was leaving a Liberal Party Meeting at the time.Demo organised by Just Peace organisation.Posted by crash on 2006 07 31 at 09:56 AM • permalink
- Calling her ‘dumb’ is a slur on all morons.Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2006 07 31 at 10:15 AM • permalink
- Hunger strikes never worked except in TV news.
The threat, such as it is, is not to leave TV news until you give in.
No real person actually cared.
TV is busy nowadays with stories of tiny victims, soul-searching and everlasting frustration, and has no time for long running suspense stories.
Terri Shiavo was the last hunger strike story that seemed to have legs.
Any new hunger strike will need that and additional legs too.
It’s not impossible, but you’d have to go big time into soap. Mom starves self to give liver to dying child or something, plus some Congressional intervention that divides the Republican party.
Sheehan was offended that Al-Maliki did find time to join President Bush in meeting with families of Iraq veterans.
My heart fair bleeds for the stupid and self-centered bitch.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 31 at 10:50 AM • permalink
- I could never understand the point of hunger strikers, especially when they were terrorists or tyrants or their accomlices and useful idiots. I mean, the taxpayer doesn’t just save money from not providing food to those who don’t deserve it. He also saves on the cost of incarceration and the cost of intelligence gathering and monitoring when released. Plus the terrorist/tyrant gives itself a punishment for the crime far more fitting than what Australia’s emasculated legal system gves nowadays. In return all the prisoner gets is a display of the nauseating self-pity that prompted it to carry out its crimes. It’s a perfect win-win situation.Posted by Jim Geones on 2006 07 31 at 11:16 AM • permalink
- Until Cindy Sheehan leaves Crawford I shant touch another raw fish eye!
Snack Truth to Power!
Posted by Bill Spencer on 2006 07 31 at 11:20 AM • permalink
- No fish eyes for me, either.
Solidarity, Brother Spencer!Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 07 31 at 11:33 AM • permalink
- There are some hunger-strikers (say Bobby Sands of the IRA) who, upon hearing they’d kicked the bucket, I thought to myself “good riddance asshole”.Posted by David Crawford on 2006 07 31 at 11:50 AM • permalink
- “Casey loved children and peace.”
It seems to me that Casey would have liked a whole bunch o’ stuff according to his mum. You ever meet a 24 year old guy who agreed with everything his mum had to say? Ever hear of an army guy who “loves children and peace”?
I hope wherever he is he can see this shit and is planning some sort of karmic retribution.
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 07 31 at 12:08 PM • permalink
- A food-related incident (not spaghetti): I saw a woman, a Camille Paglia type, enter a restaurant in New York wearing a T-shirt with an iron-on of the (London) Daily Mirror November 2004 Bush front page: “How could 45 million [whatever] Americans be so dumb?” I went to her table and told her, “You’re the lowest of the low,” and left. I’ve never done anything like that before and I do hope not to have to do it again. But I had to. I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise.Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 07 31 at 01:56 PM • permalink
- I’m betting Saddam’s ‘beef’ was a BigMac and ‘rice’ was a mis-dictation of ‘fries’, with Coke, of course.Posted by jake-the-peg on 2006 07 31 at 05:11 PM • permalink
- My favourite plea for attention is when criminals smear poo all over their cells. I expect to see this behaviour from Saddam or Cindy any time now….Posted by Daniel San on 2006 08 01 at 03:03 AM • permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
